THE FOSSIL RECORD OF PREDATION: A QUANTITATIVE OVERVIEW

Thanks to a nearly exponential growth of the literature on the fossil record of predation, our understanding of the Phanerozoic history of predator-prey interactions is advancing rapidly. To exploit the wealth of information buried in scientific papers we constructed a database documenting occurrences of traces of predation (drilling frequency and repair scar frequency) found in marine invertebrate prey from the Ediacaran through the Holocene. We utilized the published literature (196 papers) to compile a species-level (2291 species occurrences) database on the occurrence of predation-induced traces covering the last 550 million years.

Traces of predation have been present throughout the Phanerozoic, and, as suggested by other studies, increased episodically through time. The secular trend in predation intensity parallels Sepkoski's genus-level diversity curve. This concordance may reflect either a real historical signal or a sampling artifact. The preferred prey groups mirror Sepkoski's evolutionary faunas. Numerous additional trends, including type, size, and shape of traces of predation can be demonstrated throughout the Phanerozoic, although their process-based interpretations remain ambiguous.