How Many Mass Extinctions Have There Been?

To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:  Mass Extinction Event: a significant, global decrease in the diversity of life "Big 5": The five biggest mass extinction events since the Cambrian explosion of Life 550 million years ago Biodiversity Crisis: Like a mass extinction, a biodiversity crisis is a marked depletion in diversity in the fossil record. Some scientists prefer to call the late-Devonian extinction a "biodiversity crisis" because a lack of speciation contributed to the loss in diversity just as much as extinction did. Diversity curve: A line chart that shows the diversity of life (usually by genera, but sometimes by species or family) over time Lagerstatte: a deposit of sedimentary rock that contains a profound number of fossils, often with excellent preservation Shareholder Quorum Subsampling: A statistical method that corrects for some of the biases in the fossil record, allowing scientists to generate more accurate diversity curves MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth   - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth   - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com   - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices