Jack Sepkoski
Joseph John Sepkoski Jr. (July 26, 1948 – May 1, 1999) was a
mya
was part of a cycle of mass extinctions that may have occurred every 26 million years. But his most important contribution was the identification of the "Big 5" mass extinctions, events that have shaped the evolution of life on earth.
Life and work
Sepkoski was born in
high blood pressure
at the age of 50.
Sepkoski is perhaps best known for his global compendia of marine animal families and genera, data sets that continue to motivate a tremendous amount of paleobiological research. Sepkoski himself explored his compendium very thoroughly. In 1981, he identified three great
Evolutionary Faunas in the marine animal fossil record. Each of his Evolutionary Faunas, the Cambrian, Paleozoic, and Modern Faunas, is composed of Linnean classes of animals that have covarying diversity patterns, characteristic rates of turnover, and broadly similar ecologies. Most importantly, they sequentially replaced one another as dominant groups during the Phanerozoic. Sepkoski modeled the Evolutionary Faunas using three coupled logistic functions
, but the underlying drivers of the prominent shift in taxonomic composition represented by the three faunas remains unknown.
Sepkoski was married to paleontologist Christine Janis, a specialist in fossil mammals. His son (from a previous marriage) is the historian of science David Sepkoski.
Awards
- (1983). Charles Schuchert Award, Paleontological Society
- Elected foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Selected publications
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1978). "A kinetic model of Phanerozoic taxonomic diversity. I. Analysis of marine orders". S2CID 87102033.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1979). "A kinetic model of Phanerozoic taxonomic diversity. II. Early Phanerozoic families and multiple equilibria". Paleobiology. 5 (3): 222–251. S2CID 89475468.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1981). "A factor analytic description of the Phanerozoic marine fossil record". Paleobiology. 7 (1): 36–53. S2CID 133114885.
- S2CID 43002817.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1984). "A kinetic model of Phanerozoic taxonomic diversity. III Post-Paleozoic families and mass extinctions". Paleobiology. 10 (2): 246–267. S2CID 85595559.
- Raup, David M.; Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (Feb 1984). "Periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past". PMID 6583680.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1988). "Alpha, beta, or gamma: where does all the diversity go?". Paleobiology. 14 (3): 221–234. S2CID 2826581.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (1996). "Patterns of Phanerozoic extinction: a perspective from global data bases". In ISBN 978-3-642-79636-4.
- Sepkoski, J. John Jr. (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera". ISBN 978-0-87710-450-6.
Further reading
- "Sepkoski, J. John, Jr.". American National Biography. Oxford University Press. Subscription needed.
External links
- Miller, Arnold. (Sep. 1999). Memorial: J. John Sepkoski, Jr.: A personal reflection Archived 2007-02-07 at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Paleontology.
- NASA, Near Earth ObjectProgram
- Sepkoski's Online Genus Database
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