Mid-Jurassic Ammonitina (Cephalopoda, Mollusca) provide good examples of true and apparent "extinctions" (i.e., taxon or clade disappearances) at the local, regional, and global scales. A terminology is presented. Extinction is the termination of a phylogenetic lineage or entire clade (not of local demes or regional populations). Extinction was often preceded by progressive range contraction that resulted in diachronous regional disappearance ("extirpation") and occurred with the elimination of the last refuge. Other range contractions, however, were not terminal, but were followed by renewed expansions, resulting in temporary absence of the lineage over part of its known range only, due to pseudo-extinction. Some lineages, called Lazarus taxa, apparently disappeared entirely for short or extended periods by pseudotermination (causing a "phylogenetic hiatus"). This is an extreme form of pseudo-extinction with unknown refuge due to small size and (or) unsuitable facies and location. Lineage or clade reappearance may be in the form of new species, whose relationship to ancestral taxa has been problematic. Some disappearances can be explained with displacive competition, where the replacement taxon is either of endemic origin or an immigrant. Recent research in previously underexplored field areas has closed some of the gaps of documentation by finding the refuges. Range contractions and expansions, together with their regional disappearances and pseudo-extinctions, including pseudotermination, were often causally related to sea-level changes, especially eustasy. Most true extinctions, however, cannot be identified precisely, because they occurred in small populations and (or) refuges. Extinctions presumably did not coincide with global geoevents.
Phylloceratina ammonoids in the Iberian Basin during the Middle Jurassic: a model of biogeographical and taphonomic dispersal related to relative sea-level changes
