Originations and Extinctions: Analyses of Fossil Data and Simulations.

We analyse the fossil data of Benton with and without interpolation schemes. By Fourier transform analysis, we find a frequency dependence of the amplitude of 1/f for the various interpolation schemes used in the past. We illustrate that shuffling the interpolated data changes the spectra only slightly. On the other hand, an identical analysis performed on the raw (uninterpolated) fossil data gives a flat frequency spectrum. We conclude that the 1/f behavior is an artifact of the interpolation schemes. We next introduce a simulation of extinctions driven only by interactions between two trophic levels. Fourier transform analysis of the simulation data shows a frequency dependence of 1/f. When the data are grouped into a form resembling the fossil record the frequency dependence vanishes, giving a flat spectrum. Our simulation produces a frequency spectrum that agrees with the observed fossil record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]