UCSB Researcher Reveals Patterns of Extinction, Biodiversity; UCSB Graduate Nurses Hangover, Regrets

John Alroy of the University of California, Santa Barbara, utilized computer modeling to revamp the geological picture of planetary extinction/diversification patterns. Lunar Weight, ourselves a product of said esteemed University, stayed out 'til 3 a.m. and were late to work. Again.

Alroy and colleagues' research overturns conventional wisdom that There have been five or six mass extinctions since life began on Earth, suggesting instead that there were only three or four.

LW overturned a glass of orange juice and got it all over the floor and left it for our roommates to clean up because, as we said, we were late.

Alroy's work, which samples the overall rates at which fossils of specific families and species appear in rock strata of specific ages, redraws the accepted mathematical models for species diversification, which are based solely on the earliest and latest appearances of each species. Alroy's curve looks like a plateau, with a rapid increase in biodiversity followed by a "leveling off" where no new species appear, instead of the old model's assumption of constant species replenishment.

LW's work involved redrawing Beavis. You wouldn't think it's hard, but something about the lower jaw just gets us. Oh, whoops, we were supposed to fetch that file half an hour ago. Coffee. Something fried. Ugh.

The University of California at Santa Barbara: we make winners.

{from Eurekalert, and read to us by kindly old librarians who know there's beauty inside the heart of us young hoodlums}