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Science 10 August 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5532, p. 1037
DOI: 10.1126/science.293.5532.1037
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PALEONTOLOGY:
Mass Extinctions Face Downsizing, Extinction

Richard A. Kerr

A bunch of sea urchins turned up in the Cretaceous like a bad penny, millions of years after they were believed to have gone extinct. Their reappearance casts doubt on the existence of one long-presumed mass extinction and by implication the existence of several others. In a paper in the latest issue of Paleobiology, a group of British paleontologists argue that the reason so many species disappeared from the fossil record in the Cenomanian-Turonian mass extinction 94 million years ago is because the fossils dissolved during sea-level changes.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)