Data from: Climate change and the latitudinal selectivity of ancient marine extinctions

Geologically rapid climate change is anticipated to increase extinction
risk non-uniformly across the Earth’s surface. Tropical species may be
more vulnerable than temperate species to current climate warming because
of high tropical climate velocities and reduced seawater oxygen levels. To
test if rapid warming indeed preferentially increased the extinction risk
of tropical fossil taxa, we combine a robust statistical assessment of
latitudinal extinction selectivity (LES) with the dominant views on
climate change occurring at ancient extinction crises. Using a global
dataset of marine fossil occurrences, we assess extinction rates for
tropical and temperate genera, applying log-ratios to assess effect size
and Akaike weights for model support. Among the classical ‘Big Five’ mass
extinction episodes, the end-Permian mass extinction exhibits temperate
preference of extinctions, whereas the Late Devonian and end-Triassic
selectively hit tropical genera. Simple links between the inferred
direction of climate change and LES are idiosyncratic, both during crisis
and background intervals. More complex models, including sampling patterns
and changes in the latitudinal distribution of continental shelf area,
show tropical LES to be generally associated with raised tropical heat and
temperate LES with global cold temperatures. With implications for the
future, our paper demonstrates the consistency of high tropical
temperatures, habitat loss and the capacity of both to interact in
generating geographic patterns in extinctions.