DIVERSITY, OXGYEN AND TRUE POLAR WANDER

The role of external factors in affecting or even determining the diversity of Post –Cambrian Explosion animal life has been investigated for decades with still little consensus. Here we demonstrate a remarkable correspondence between change in oxygen levels through time in ten million year intervals as modeled by GEOCARBSULF with changes in animal diversity as modeled by the latest set of diversity curves. When the change in oxygen is plotted against the change in animal diversity a significant correlation coefficient is obtained. However, new insight is also gained by plotting the diversity curve against the time of significant intervals of True Polar Wander events as well. In this talk we will demonstrate that both TPW and oxygen levels appear to have been major, or even the most important factors resulting in the observed trends in animal diversity. In particular, the direction of TWP events may have caused significant changes to carbon cycling as well as diversity and biogeography. We also present data from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica that is consistent with there being a change from endemic to cosmopolitan back to endemic mollusk (ammonite) faunas from Coniacian through Maastrichtian time that appears related to TPW. That high correlation occurs in model results using entirely different inputs appears to give increased robustness to the validity of these quite separate model results.