Fig. 4: Timing of temperature change (ΔT) relative to extinction horizon for the major (red) and minor (blue) extinctions during the past 450 million years.

The dashed line is the position of the extinction horizon in relation to the time span of the largest magnitude climate changes (colored bars) within the time interval containing the extinction. The exception to this is the end-Devonian bar (see Supplementary Fig. 3). This bar represents instead the timespan of glaciation in the latest Devonian. The plot emphasizes how the timing of extinction is contemporaneous with large magnitude climate change (within the resolution of the available data). For the ages of mass extinctions and ΔT see Supplementary Table 3. Red and blue bars represent Big Five and minor mass extinctions, respectively. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.