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Mass Extinction & Biodiversity Through Deep Time

Live 3D simulation of taxonomic diversity across the Phanerozoic: a logistic origination-extinction model builds a growing skyline of genus counts across 541 million years, with the Big Five mass extinctions as scripted Gaussian pulses you can trigger yourself.

Palaeontology & Evolutionary Geology3DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted
paleontology-biology ↗ Open standalone

This simulator turns the Phanerozoic diversity curve — the record of how many genera were alive at each point in Earth's history — into a 3D skyline that grows in real time. A logistic origination/extinction model advances a simulated clock from the Cambrian explosion (541 million years ago) to the present, and every bar of the skyline freezes in the diversity value the instant the clock passes that age, so the terrain you are watching form is the diversity curve. Toggle the real "Big Five" mass extinctions on or off, tune how fast new genera originate versus how fast the background rate erodes them, or reach in and trigger your own extinction pulse to see how quickly the biosphere recovers afterward.

⚙ Under the hood

A live logistic origination-extinction model builds a growing 3D skyline of genus diversity across 541 million years of the Phanerozoic, with the real 'Big Five' mass extinctions as scripted Gaussian pulses you can toggle or trigger yourself.

paleontologyextinctionevolutionbiodiversitygeologic-timefossil-record

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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