10.5061/DRYAD.53N6N
Marcot, Jonathan D.
University of Illinois System
Fox, David L.
University of Minnesota
Niebuhr, Spencer R.
University of Minnesota
Data from: Late Cenozoic onset of the latitudinal diversity gradient of
North American mammals
Dryad
dataset
2017
Mammalia
latitudinal diversity gradient
2017-05-24T00:00:00Z
2017-05-24T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524750113
29925824 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The decline of species richness from equator to pole, or latitudinal
diversity gradient (LDG), is nearly universal among clades of living
organisms, yet whether it was such a pervasive pattern in the geologic
past remains uncertain. Here, we calculate the strength of the LDG for
terrestrial mammals in North America over the past 65 My, using 27,903
fossil occurrences of Cenozoic terrestrial mammals from western North
America downloaded from the Paleobiology Database. Accounting for temporal
and spatial variation in sampling, the LDG was substantially weaker than
it is today for most of the Cenozoic and the robust modern LDG of North
American mammals evolved only over the last 4 My. The strength of the LDG
correlates negatively with global temperature, suggesting a role of global
climate patterns in the establishment and maintenance of the LDG for North
American mammals.
Paleobiology Database Mammalian Occurrence DataOccurrence data obtained
from the Paleobiology Database (https://www.paleobiodb.org) on May 21,
2015 (data were primarily derived from the North American Fossil Mammal
Systematics Database;
https://paleobiodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?page=OSA_3_North_American_mammals).allMammals-20150521-occs.csvR file of results of 10,000 pseudoreplicate analysesThese are the the results of our 10,000 pseudoreplicate analyses described in the paper. They can be loaded into the R environment by placing them into the working directory and using the command: load("ldg_rez_2My_10000_20151023.R")ldg_rez_2My_10000_20151023.RStable Isotope Data from Zachos et al. 2001These include the stable isotope data and dates used to calculate correlation between d18O and fossil slopes. All data are from Zachos J, Pagani M, Sloan L, Thomas E, Billups K (2001) Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292(5517):686–693.zachos2001.csvR-Script: Analysis codeThis contains the code for the analyses described in this paper. All optional settings required for analysis can be set in this script. This file also contains the code to build all the figures.ldg_pub.RR-Script: Supporting FunctionsThis file contains the R code for all of the supporting functions for the complete analysis.ldgSource_pub.R
North America