Changing Patterns of Provinciality and Diversity of Fossil Animals in Relation to Plate Tectonics

Abstract

Following a brief review of the faictors controlling the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates and marine invertebrates four patterns of provincialism related to lithospheric plate movements are distinguished, and illustrated by both qualitative and quantitative studies. Diversity changes in geological time, with mass extinction treated as an extreme case of diversity reduction, have been explained by the splitting and suturing of continental masses, with concomitant changes in potentiality for genetic isolation and interspecies competition as well as such non-biological factors as stability or predictability of the environment and position of sea level. However, the postulated diversity increase since the Palaeozoic has been challenged on methodological grounds. Attempts have been made to determine the position of the Permian equator by means of spatial diversity changes in brachiopods of that age, but the results have been interpreted in very different ways.