Re: Ocean EcoSystems Unexpectedly Stable

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Tue, 14 May 2002, Richard W Travsky wrote:

> However, the change in ecosystems was not produced by the killing events,
> the article emphasizes, but by the way life evolved afterwards.

This seems to contradict this:

> "What we
> think happened was that only these two big extinction events were severe
> enough to so empty the world that the basic structure of the ecosystem
> itself had to be re-established," says Bambach.

> "That took time, and as
> things evolved, the pattern of ecologic relationship between different
> adaptive types of organisms developed differently." 

I wonder what it was that departed as a result of the event that so
"emptied the world"?  After all, rudists were gone before, ammonites had
suffered a Cretaceous-long decline.  Mosasaurs and other big reptillian
marine animals had all but gone before.  I need to read this study...but
couldn't resist the questions.