Data from: Kungurian extinctions in eupelycosaurs: A press-pulse event?
Data files
May 15, 2026 version files 140.03 KB
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CotylosauriaAges.csv
5.14 KB
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README.md
2.19 KB
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TreeEupely100.phy
132.70 KB
Abstract
The fossil record offers a unique window into patterns of extinction and biodiversity recovery over deep time, and recent advances in analytical methods have significantly enhanced this research field. Our analysis of an updated dataset that includes 50 terminal taxa and 175 fossil occurrences of Ophiacodontidae, Edaphosauridae, and Sphenacodontidae (OES grade below) using a recent implementation of the skyline Fossilized Birth-Death model (FBD below) confirms our previous conclusion that the OES grade diversified during the latter half of the Pennsylvanian but waned thereafter. However, our new results differ in several important points compared to our previous study (published in 2024). Notably, the transition between these two diversification regimes seems to have occurred earlier (at 298.9 Ma, at the Carboniferous-Permian transition), and it appears to have been marked by a moderate (0.527 survival probability), previously unreported extinction event. Also, the OES grade seems to have experienced a much more severe mass extinction event in the mid-Kungurian, with an estimated survival rate of only 0.113, which left very few surviving OES grade lineages. Climatic instability that started around the Carboniferous-Permian boundary and lasted throughout the Cisuralian, plausibly caused by intense volcanism of the Tarim Large Igneous Province and the Panjal traps, may explain this pattern, which consists of a stagnating biodiversity followed by a brief, severe extinction event. This is reminiscent of the press-pulse model proposed by Arens and West in 2008, but if there was indeed an end-Carboniferous crisis, it could also be viewed as a new, more complex, pulse-press-pulse pattern.
Principal Investigator contact information
Name: Michel Laurin
Institution: Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie de Paris (CR2P2)
Email: michel.laurin@mnhn.fr
Dataset Overview
This dataset contains the data used in Laurin et al. (to appear in Paleobiology). We first updated the absolute age of the 174 fossil occurrences of the 50 terminal taxa considered by Didier and Laurin (2024) to reflect the geological time scale (GTS from here on) published in September 2023 (Cohen et al. 2023) because Didier and Laurin (2024) had used an earlier time scale published by Gradstein and Ogg (2020). In most cases, the differences between these two GTSs are small for the relevant chronostratigraphic units, namely the interval between late Pennsylvanian and early Guadalupian. The sole exception is the Kungurian/Roadian boundary, which was placed at 274.4 Ma in the 2020 GTS, but was moved to 273.01 Ma in the 2023 GTS. These records were extracted both from the Paleobiology Database (Peters and McClennen 2016) and from the primary literature (see Didier and Laurin 2024 for the references).
Files
CotylosauriaAges.csv
This file contains the absolute age of the 174 fossil occurrences of the 50 terminal taxa considered in the study.
TreeEupely100.phy
This file contains a tree population sample of 100 equiparsimonious trees in Newick format.
References (in this ReadMe)
Cohen, K. M., D. Harper, P. Gibbard, and N. Car. 2023. International chronostratigraphic chart. International Commission on stratigraphy. www.stratigraphy.org
Didier, G. and Laurin, M. 2024, Testing extinction events and temporal shifts in diversification and fossilization rates through the skyline Fossilized Birth-Death (FBD) model: The example of some mid-Permian synapsid extinctions. Cladistics, 40: 282-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/cla.12577
Peters, S. E., and M. McClennen. 2016. The Paleobiology Database application programming interface. Paleobiology 42(1):1–7. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2015.39