The rate at which a once-abundant population declines in density prior to local or global
extinction can strongly influence the precision of statistical estimates of extinction time. Here …

Accurate estimates of the timing of extinctions (θ) are critical for understanding the causes of
major die-off events and for identifying evolutionary or environmental transitions. Yet many …

Studies of extinction in the fossil record commonly involve comparisons of taxonomic
extinction rates, often expressed as the percentage of taxa (eg, families or genera) going …

Do mass extinctions grade continuously into the background extinctions occurring
throughout the history of life, or are they a fundamentally distinct phenomenon that cannot …

Because the fossil record is incomplete, the last fossil of a taxon is a biased estimate of its
true time of extinction. Numerous methods have been developed in the palaeontology …

The study by Prescott et al.(1) provides an inspiring quantitative framework for disentangling
the effects of humans and climate on megafaunal extinctions, which is essential because …

Stratigraphic patterns of last occurrences (LOs) of fossil taxa potentially fingerprint mass
extinctions and delineate rates and geometries of those events. Although empirical studies …

The estimation of diversification rates is one of the most vividly debated topics in modern
systematics, with considerable controversy surrounding the power of phylogenetic and fossil …

Many authors have proposed scenarios for mass extinctions that consist of multiple pulses
or stages, but little work has been done on accounting for the Signor-Lipps effect in such …

This study examines estimates of extinction rates for the current purported biotic crisis and
from the fossil record. Studies that compare current and geological extinctions sometimes …