Deep-time climate legacies affect origination rates of marine genera

The effect of climate change on biodiversity is dependent on previous climatic trends. For example, climate warming is more deleterious when added to a long-term warming trend. We tested how the interaction of short- and long-term climate change affects origination rates through time. Using data from the marine fossil record, we show that origination rates in the last 485 million years tend to increase when climate cooling is superimposed on longer-term cooling trends. These findings might clarify the ongoing debate on the relationship between climate and origination and underline the complexity of evolutionary dynamics and the presence of intricate interactions in Earth's system.