Marine animal diversity across latitudinal and temperature gradients during the Phanerozoic

• DOI: 10.1111/pala.70006
• Publication Date: 2025-05-05T05:30:53Z
• Authors: Roger B.J. Benson; Roger A. Close; Gawain T. Antell; Robert J. Whittaker; Paul Valdes; Alex Farnsworth; Daniel J. Lunt; Shuzhong Shen; Junxuan Fan; Erin E. Saupe

Abstract The latitudinal biodiversity gradient (LBG) is a fundamental biological pattern seen across taxa and ecosystems today, but its drivers remain uncertain despite intense study. Palaeontological data may add valuable evidence from diversity distributions during intervals with different Earth system configurations, including potential analogues of future climate regimes. However, accurately characterizing these challenging because the geographic scope fossil record coverage varies through time, introducing biases that have not been quantified by most previous studies. Here, we attempt comprehensive documentation marine invertebrates past 540 million years, explicitly accounting for regional variation in sampling. We demonstrate large uncertainties when using current at this scale. Nevertheless, some signals are detectable. show animal declined increasing palaeolatitude decreasing temperature least Permian onwards (298.9 Ma). Additionally, find LBG was shallower on average Earth's hotter, although signal weak. also document strong, systematic bias due to sampling North America especially Europe, which led studies incorrectly infer mid‐latitude peak warm history. Our results provide baseline what databases might tell us about Phanerozoic LBGs animals, suggests quantitative evaluation will be central advancing knowledge