Causes and consequences of end-Ediacaran extinction – an update
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since the 1980s, the existence of one or more extinction events in the late Ediacaran has been the subject of debate.Discussion surrounding these events has intensified in the last decade, in concert with efforts to understand drivers of global change over the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition and the appearance of the more modern-looking Phanerozoic biosphere.In this paper we review the history of thought and work surrounding late Ediacaran extinctions, with a particular focus on the last 5 years of paleontological, geochemical, and geochronological research.We consider the extent to which key questions have been answered, and pose new questions which will help to characterize drivers of environmental and biotic change.A key challenge for future work will be the calculation of extinction intensities that account for limited sampling, the duration of Ediacaran 'assemblage' zones, and the preponderance of taxa restricted to a single 'assemblage'; without these data, the extent to which Ediacaran bioevents represent genuine mass extinctions comparable to the 'Big 5' extinctions of the Phanerozoic remains to be rigorously tested.Lastly, we propose a revised model for drivers of late Ediacaran extinction pulses that builds off recent data and growing consensus within the field.This model is speculative, but does frame testable hypotheses that can be targeted in the next decade of work. Impact statementThe majority of extinction-based paleontological research over the last four decades has focused on the 'big 5' mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic.In parallel, however, geologists and paleontologists working in the Precambrian have mulled the existence of one or more pulses of extinction (and potentially 'mass extinction') in the latest Neoproterozoic (~574-539 million years ago) shortly before the onset of the Cambrian.These episodes of global biotic turnover removed the mysterious Ediacara biota, as well as groups of more recognizable animal fossils.In this review, we summarize the history of ideas and research surrounding these events, as well as recent work in a range of fields that is attempting to identify the driversboth biotic and abiotic of extinction.We outline four key questions which, we argue, will help us to compare the causes and consequences of Ediacaran extinction alongside the Phanerozoic 'Big 5', and which will help us decide whether the 'Big 5' might eventually become the 'Big 6' (or the 'Big 7', if the current biodiversity crisis is considered).Finally, we propose a model for drivers of late Ediacaran extinction that builds off recent data.This model is speculative, but frames testable hypotheses that will help determine the role these events may have played in the Ediacaran-Cambrian emergence of the modern-looking biosphere, and thus the extent to which Ediacaran extinction and the Cambrian explosion may be linked.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".