Models of Extinction: A Review

We review recent work aimed at modeling species extinction over geological time. We discuss a number of models which, rather than dealing with the direct causes of particular extinction events, attempt to predict overall statistical trends, such as the relative frequencies of large and small extinctions, or the distribution of the lifetimes of species, genera or higher taxa. We also describe the available fossil and other data, and compare the trends visible in these data with the predictions of the models.