The Lower Tertiary Gulf Coast was subjected to repeated transgressive-regressive cycles of
varying rate and extent which had a marked effect on species longevities. In some …

In marine mollusks, planktotrophic and nonplanktotrophic modes of development generally
confer different scales of larval dispersal, which in turn influence species' geographic ranges …

Changes in genus diversity within higher taxa of marine animals on the temporal scale of a
few million years are more strongly correlated with changes in extinction rate than with …

Pelagic (open-ocean) species have enormous population sizes and broad, even global,
distributions. These characteristics should damp rates of speciation in allopatric and …

Modes of larval development play important roles in the ecology, biogeography, and
evolution of marine benthic organisms. Studies of the larval ecology of fossil organisms can …

Marine life histories differ from terrestrial life histories because seawater is denser and more
viscous than air, because desiccation is not a problem for organisms in water, and because …

Biologists have long sought to identify and explain patterns in the diverse array of marine life
histories. The most famous speculation about such patterns is Gunnar Thorson's suggestion …

Using Sepkoski's compendium of fossil marine families (1982a, and updates), we have
analyzed the changing pace of familial origination and extinction within 55 extinct and 44 …

Onshore-offshore patterns of faunal change occurred at many taxonomic scales during the
Paleozoic Era, ranging from replacement of the Cambrian evolutionary fauna by the …

Recent studies of Paleozoic benthic marine invertebrate communities and ecological
investigations of modern marine and terrestrial environments have provided information on …