Artificial Intelligence Discovers Surprising Patterns in Earth's Biological Mass Extinctions

A new study applies machine learning to the fossil record to visualize life's history, showing the impacts of major evolutionary events. This shows the long-term evolutionary and ecological impacts of major events of extinction and speciation. Colors represent the geological periods from the Tonian, starting 1 billion years ago, in yellow, to the current Quaternary Period, shown in green. The red to blue color transition marks the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most disruptive events in the fossil record. The idea that mass extinctions allow many new types of species to evolve is a central concept in evolution, but a new study using artificial intelligence to examine the fossil record finds this is rarely true, and there must be another explanation.