Shanan E. Peters

TL;DR: In this paper, a new data set of fossil occurrences representing 3.5 million specimens was presented, and it was shown that global and local diversity was less than twice as high in the Neogene as in the mid-Paleozoic.

TL;DR: In this paper, a simple estimate of the amount of marine sedimentary rock available for sampling is used to estimate the number of formations in the stratigraphic Lexicon of the United States Geological Survey.

TL;DR: New stratigraphic and geochemical data are used to show that early Palaeozoic marine sediments deposited approximately 540–480 Myr ago record both an expansion in the area of shallow epicontinental seas and anomalous patterns of chemical sedimentation that are indicative of increased oceanic alkalinity and enhanced chemical weathering of continental crust.

TL;DR: This work compares the rates of expansion and truncation of preserved marine sedimentary basins to rates of origination and extinction among Phanerozoic marine animal genera and suggests that the processes responsible for producing variability in the sedimentary rock record, such as plate tectonics and sea-level change, may have been dominant and consistent macroevolutionary forces throughout the Phanrozoic.

TL;DR: A new compilation of the amount of exposed marine sedimentary rock is used to predict how the observed fossil record of extinction would appear if the time series of true extinction rates were in fact smooth, and supports the hypothesis that much of the observed short-term volatility in extinction rates is an artefact of variability in the stratigraphic record.