HangzhouA fossil-trained model recasts 3 mass extinctions as slow declines.
Other reconstructions describe sudden cataclysms, so its developers say the finding could force a rethink.
China’s Zhejiang Lab trained it on fossil depths from tens of thousands of sites to predict when each fossil was deposited.
Matthew Clapham, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, notes high-resolution local records already exist.
The team has so far presented the model, OneStrata, only at a Denver conference, on 12 October.
How each outlet framed it
- Nature
- reports OneStrata suggests three Big Five extinctions were gradual declines rather than sudden cataclysms, presented at GSA Denver
Sources: Nature