paleonet Mass extinctions every 62 million years

["Dr. Lisa E. Park" <lepark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This just posted on Science In the News:

MASS EXTINCTION COMES EVERY 62 MILLION YEARS, UC PHYSICISTS DISCOVER
from San Francisco Chronicle

With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and
vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC
Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer
study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years.

Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among
scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of
abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few
million years -- and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever
since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life
forms went extinct about 65 million years ago. The Berkeley researchers are
physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have
analyzed the most exhaustive compendium offossil records that exists -- data
that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380
separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in
the world's seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned.
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