A critique of Thompson and Ramírez-Barahona (2023) or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the fossil record

Abstract

A recent study published in Biology Letters by Thompson and Ramírez-Barahona (2023) argued that, according to analyses of diversification on two massive molecular phylogenies comprising thousands of species, there is no evidence that angiosperms (i.e. flowering plants) were affected by the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction. Here, I critique these conclusions from both methodological and philosophical perspectives. I demonstrate that the methods used in their study possess statistical limitations that strongly reduce the power to detect a true mass extinction event using data similar to those analysed by Thompson and Ramírez-Barahona (2023). Additionally, I use their study as a springboard to examine the relationship between phylogenetic and fossil evidence in diversification studies.