The Winners of Mass Extinction: With Predators Gone, Prey Thrives
Extinction of fishes 360 million years ago created natural ecology experiment
In present-day ecology, the removal or addition of a predator in an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago. (more…)