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Palaeontology

Life's downs and ups

The peak in recovery of biodiversity seems to lag the peak of anextinction by about ten million years. This pattern is independent of theseverity of extinction, implying that recoveries create new ecological opportunities.

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Figure 1: Different possibilities for the recovery in biodiversity after extinctions.

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Correspondence to Douglas Erwin.

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Erwin, D. Life's downs and ups. Nature 404, 129–130 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35004679

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