volume Page 1 PROGRAM 10h00-10h20: E. Pétus, P. Gerrienne & C. Prestianni Physostoma cf. stellatum Holden : a Bashkirian spermatophyte from Bouxharmont (Belgium). 10h20-10h40: C. Prestianni, D. Fokan & P. Gerrienne Record of wildfires in the Famennian of Belgium. 10h40-11h00: P. Gonez & P. Gerrienne Comments on Cooksonia, a basal Eutracheophyte. 11h00-11h20: P. Gerrienne, C. Strullu-Derrien & P...

—In post-Cambrian time, five events—the end-Ordovician, end-Frasnian in the Late Devonian, end-Permian, end-Triassic, and end-Cretaceous—are commonly grouped as the ‘‘big five’’ global intervals of mass extinction. Plotted by magnitude, extinction intensities for all Phanerozoic substages show a continuous distribution, with the five traditionally recognized mass extinctions located in the uppe...

Predation, in the broad sense of an organism killing another organism for nutritional purposes, is probably as old as life itself and has originated many times during the history of life. Although little of the beginnings is caught in the fossil record, observations in the rock record and theoretical considerations suggest that predation played a crucial role in some of the major transitions in...

—Analysis of two independent data sets with increased taxonomic resolution (genera rather than families) using the revised 2012 timescale reveals that an extinction periodicity first detected by Raup and Sepkoski (1984) for only the post-Paleozoic actually runs through the entire Phanerozoic. Although there is not a local peak of extinction every 27 Myr, an excess of the fraction of genus extin...