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Science 28 September 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2401 - 2404
DOI: 10.1126/science.1063789
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Perspectives

PALEOECOLOGY:
Measuring Past Biodiversity

Jeremy B. C. Jackson and Kenneth G. Johnson

The increase in oceanic biodiversity over the past half billion years is poorly understood despite the great importance of the pattern for understanding the history of life. Compilations of genera from the paleontological literature for the entire Phanerozoic (~540 million years) include only half the number of fossilizable taxa that occur in the oceans today, and the data are highly variable in quality. In their Perspective, Jackson and Johnson argue that a limited number of intensive and consistent sampling projects could maximize our understanding of the overall pattern and trends in past marine biodiversity.

J.B.C. Jackson is at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072, Balboa, Republic of Panama. E-mail: jbcj{at}ucsd.edu K. G. Johnson is at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exhibition Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA.

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