Global climate changes account for the main trends of conodont diversity but not for their final demise

Abstract

Conodonts, one of the longest-lived early groups of vertebrates, have a very complete fossil record ranging from the late Cambrian to the end of the Triassic and persisted through many global climatic and biotic events. In this paper, we analyse a large dataset harvested from the Paleobiology Database to compute global diversity curves at the generic level and explore patterns of conodont paleogeographic distribution. Our results partly confirm the most prominent findings of earlier studies including the occurrence of an Ordovician acme, a Permian nadir and a short-lived Triassic recovery.

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