AI-generated impression of the End-Permian mass extinction.
One of the more ridiculous of creationist claims is that Earth was perfectly ‘fine-tuned’ for life by an omniscient, omnibenevolent designer. Ridiculous because a mere glance at the reality should tell them that natural disasters such as earthquakes, seismic activity and flash-floods regularly devastate huge areas and kill vast numbers of people. The rose-tinted view requires a remarkably selective reading of the planet’s history: admire the organisms alive today, but overlook the environmental upheavals that wiped out so many of their predecessors. A world capable of supporting life is not necessarily a world designed to protect it, and the geological record provides abundant evidence of that distinction.
New research, paper, published in Nature Communications, adds another dimension to this problem. An international team, including UNM palaeobiologist Corinne “Cori” Myers, examined approximately 539 million years of Earth’s history and identified five major, persistent ‘mega-climate’ regimes. Transitions between these regimes were associated with heightened vulnerability in the biosphere and elevated extinction risk. The history emerging from this analysis is one of prolonged climatic states punctuated by potentially dangerous reorganisations.
The study brings together carbon and oxygen isotope records, statistical analyses and a conceptual model of the interacting climate and carbon cycle. The researchers compared the environmental patterns with a measure of biological vulnerability incorporating fossil diversity and the rates at which groups appeared and disappeared. Their findings suggest that the consequences of an environmental disturbance depend partly on the state of the planetary system it affects: a perturbation can help push that system into a different regime, with serious consequences for its inhabitants.
This does not establish that every mass extinction had the same cause, or that each climate transition inevitably produced one. Volcanism, asteroid impacts and their associated environmental effects remain essential parts of the explanation. The study instead offers a broader framework for understanding why some episodes of disruption coincided with particularly severe biological crises. Its central finding concerns an association between changing climate–carbon regimes and increased vulnerability, rather than a single universal extinction mechanism.
For the creationist argument, however, the difficulty is plain. If Earth’s suitability for living organisms is to count as evidence of benevolent design, what are we to make of its capacity to become catastrophically unsuitable for organisms already living here? Invoking a designer’s concern for life while dismissing the destruction of entire evolutionary lineages is an exercise in choosing the evidence to fit the conclusion. Survival receives the credit; extinction disappears into the small print.
Evolution offers a coherent explanation for the apparent fit between organisms and their environments. Natural selection favours adaptations to prevailing conditions, without foresight or any guarantee that those conditions will persist. When environments change, yesterday’s successful adaptations may cease to be useful, and entire lineages may disappear. The survivors whose descendants populate Earth today therefore cannot be treated as an unbiased sample of a planet’s benevolence. They are the surviving branches of a history that also contains immense loss.
The question is consequently not whether Earth permits life—it plainly does—but whether its history supports the claim that it was carefully arranged for life’s welfare. A planet whose climate can undergo profound reorganisations associated with elevated extinction risk is an uncomfortable exhibit for that claim.
Background^ How a life-supporting planet becomes hostile to its inhabitants. Earth can support life while periodically becoming unsuitable for many of the organisms living on it. Its climate, oceans, atmosphere and carbon cycle form an interacting system. Changes in one component can propagate through the others, sometimes producing environmental upheavals on a global scale.
Climate regimes, feedbacks and tipping points
A climate regime is a persistent pattern of conditions and interactions within the Earth system. Persistent does not mean unchanging: substantial fluctuations can occur within a regime. The new study identifies five broad “mega-climate” regimes across approximately 539 million years, with transitions associated with increased biological vulnerability.
Feedbacks can either oppose or amplify change. For example, expanding ice reflects more sunlight, encouraging further cooling. Conversely, melting ice exposes darker surfaces that absorb more solar energy. When a threshold is crossed, such interactions can help drive the system towards a different state. A transition that is relatively abrupt geologically need not be instantaneous on a human timescale.
The carbon cycle: regulation without a guarantee
Volcanism supplies carbon dioxide to the atmosphere–ocean system, while processes including silicate-rock weathering and the burial of organic carbon help remove it over geological time. These processes contribute to long-term climate regulation, but they do not maintain an unvarying temperature or guarantee the survival of existing ecosystems.
Large, rapid carbon releases can overwhelm slower compensating processes. Moreover, the consequences depend on the planet’s starting conditions, including continental geography, ocean circulation and the existing climate.
How environmental stresses reinforce one another
Cooling can also be devastating, particularly when accompanied by expanding ice sheets, falling sea levels and the loss of shallow marine habitats. The danger depends on the magnitude, speed and combination of changes, rather than on warming alone.
- Heat stress: warming can push organisms beyond their physiological tolerances and increase the oxygen requirements of many animals.
- Ocean oxygen loss: warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen. Changes in circulation and stronger layering of the water column can also restrict oxygen replenishment at depth, while decomposition consumes oxygen.
- Ocean acidification: seawater absorbs carbon dioxide, lowering its pH and reducing the availability of carbonate ions used by many organisms to build shells and skeletons. “Acidification” means becoming less alkaline; seawater need not become acidic.
- Habitat and food-web disruption: changing sea levels, rainfall, temperature and primary productivity can remove habitats and food supplies, spreading the effects beyond the species initially affected.
The Big Five mass extinctions
These five major biodiversity crises had different triggers and unfolded over different timescales. Dates are approximate. The marine fossil record supplies much of the evidence; precise estimates of species losses vary with the data and methods used.
Important distinction: the study’s five mega-climate regimes are not the same thing as the Big Five mass extinctions. There is no simple one-to-one correspondence between them. The research examines how changes in the climate–carbon system relate to biological vulnerability; it does not replace the evidence for the specific causes of individual extinction events.
Major extinction events and their environmental context Extinction event Approximate timing Principal disturbances and uncertainties Major biological consequences End-Ordovician 445–444 million years ago Major glaciation, cooling and falling sea levels, followed by deglaciation and further changes in ocean conditions. Oxygen depletion contributed; the sequence and relative importance of mechanisms remain under investigation. Severe losses among marine animals, including brachiopods, trilobites and graptolites. Late Devonian Multiple crises, especially around 372 and 359 million years ago Repeated ocean oxygen depletion, climatic changes and sea-level fluctuations. Proposed drivers include volcanism and changes in weathering and nutrient delivery associated with the spread of land plants; their contributions remain debated. Devastation of reef ecosystems and major losses among marine invertebrates and fishes. End-Permian About 252 million years ago Siberian Traps volcanism and associated greenhouse-gas releases drove extreme warming, with widespread marine oxygen loss and other chemical disturbances, including acidification. The most severe of the Big Five, affecting marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Trilobites disappeared entirely. End-Triassic About 201 million years ago Central Atlantic Magmatic Province volcanism released gases that disrupted climate and ocean chemistry. Warming, acidification and oxygen depletion contributed, with shorter cooling episodes also possible. Major marine losses and the disappearance of many terrestrial vertebrate groups, followed by the expansion of dinosaurs into vacated ecological roles. End-Cretaceous 66 million years ago The Chicxulub asteroid impact caused darkness, rapid cooling and disruption of photosynthesis and food webs. Deccan volcanism also affected the environment, but the impact is the principal established trigger. Non-avian dinosaurs, ammonites and many other groups disappeared. Birds survived, as did some mammals and other vertebrates.
Why adaptation is no guarantee of survival
Natural selection favours traits that improve reproductive success under existing conditions. It cannot anticipate an asteroid impact, a volcanic episode or a future reorganisation of ocean circulation. Populations may adapt or migrate when conditions change, but neither response is guaranteed, especially when change is rapid, geographically extensive or affects several environmental requirements simultaneously.
The continued existence of life therefore demonstrates that some lineages survived. It does not demonstrate that Earth remained favourable to its previous inhabitants, or that their welfare was protected.
Brief glossary
- Feedback
- A process through which a change produces effects that either amplify or oppose that change.
- Tipping point
- A threshold beyond which a system can shift substantially into a different state.
- Anoxia
- The absence of dissolved oxygen; hypoxia means an oxygen shortage.
- Ocean acidification
- A decrease in seawater pH, commonly caused by the absorption of additional carbon dioxide.
- Mass extinction
- A geologically brief interval of exceptionally widespread biodiversity loss across many groups of organisms.
The paper in Nature Communications was accompanied by a University of New Mexico news release:
UNM researcher helps uncover recurring climate regimes linked to elevated extinction risk
Earth’s climate has undergone dramatic changes throughout its history, but new research suggests those changes may not have been as random as previously thought.
A study led by an international team of researchers, including The University of New Mexico paleobiologist Corinne “Cori” Myers, found that Earth’s climate over the past 539 million years tended to remain within a small number of recurring climate states. The research also found that periods of elevated extinction, including the five major mass extinction events in Earth’s history, frequently occurred as the planet transitioned between those states.
The findings were published in Nature Communications in a paper titled “Transitions between persistent climate–carbon regimes coincide with elevated Phanerozoic biosphere vulnerability.”
The Phanerozoic Eon spans approximately the last 539 million years and includes the period during which complex life diversified and became widespread on Earth.
Our analyses identified five major ‘mega-climate’ states with relatively abrupt transitions. The behavior of CO2 and temperature in the Phanerozoic can be approximated as transitioning between these identified states.
Associate Professor Corinne Myers, co-author.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM, USA.
The research team informally referred to the five climate states as “Haggis bins,” a nod to the Scottish setting where the project began and the appearance of the climate data in graphical representations.
Figure showing macroevolutionary vulnerability vs. time with the skulls presenting mass extinction events. Vulnerability scores greater than 0 suggest that the biosphere is under stress and all of these mass extinction events are happening in that region of the plot. The 5 haggis bins are in grey vs. white bars in the background.Credit: Sudakow et. al. 2026. Fig. 5.
To identify these climate states, the researchers used several analytical approaches, including recurrence analysis, dynamical mathematical modeling and early warning sign analysis. They combined those techniques with data on extinction and biodiversity to examine relationships between long-term climate patterns and changes in the biosphere.
In simple terms, the researchers analyzed hundreds of millions of years of climate data to determine whether Earth’s climate behaved more like a system moving randomly through different conditions or one that repeatedly settled into recognizable patterns.
The analysis indicated that climate conditions tended to remain within relatively persistent regimes before undergoing transitions to another state. Those transitions were associated with periods of increased extinction.
The researchers found that elevated extinction rates, including those associated with the “Big Five” mass extinctions, tended to occur near transitions between the major climate states. The team’s early warning sign analysis also provided evidence of increasing instability within the climate data around these transitions.
The study further examined what the researchers call “biosphere vulnerability” essentially, how readily biodiversity can decline when extinction rates outpace the rate at which new species arise.
Biosphere vulnerability overall was higher for nearly all periods of elevated extinction and particularly high at the Big Five mass extinctions.
Associate Professor Corinne Myers.
The project grew out of a two-week workshop in summer 2024 at the Futures Institute, part of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Five researchers from different scientific backgrounds, including mathematics, climate modeling and paleobiology, came together to examine mass extinctions in the context of global climate change.
Myers’ laboratory at UNM played a central role in providing the underlying data used in the study. Her lab has spent nearly a decade compiling climate proxy data and developing methods for estimating extinction rates. Several former UNM graduate students contributed to collecting portions of that data as part of their graduate research.
Figure summary of Earth history events, including all the elevated extinction events (not just the biggest 5) as skulls, +/- for vulnerability above and below zero, large igneous province activity, early warning signs, and greenhouse vs. icehouse regimes from prior literature.Credit: Sudakow et. al. 2026. Fig. 2.
My role in the project was conceptualizing the project with collaborators, providing all the data, and assisting in both analysis and publication of results.
Associate Professor Corinne Myers.
Understanding what happens during transitions between those regimes could provide new insight into why ecosystems become more vulnerable to extinction.
Future work should target Haggis bin transitions to help pinpoint the nature of increased stress these transitions place on the biosphere.
Associate Professor Corinne Myers.
Myers also emphasized the importance of continuing to study environmental change occurring today and what it could mean for modern ecosystems.
While the study examines climate and biodiversity across hundreds of millions of years rather than explicitly predicting future extinction potential, its findings provide new perspective for considering how changes in the climate system can affect the biosphere.
The research has particular relevance for places such as New Mexico, where a naturally arid environment makes water availability especially important as climate conditions change.
Myers presented the research in May at the Rocky Mountain Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Albuquerque. She is scheduled to present the findings again at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver in October.
Publication:
What emerges from this research is a history of life on a planet whose physical processes provide both opportunities for diversification and conditions for catastrophic loss. Long periods of relative stability offer no permanent protection: changes in the climate–carbon system can coincide with heightened biological vulnerability. Earth’s capacity to sustain life has never amounted to a guarantee that its existing inhabitants will survive.
That presents an obvious difficulty for the claim that Earth was carefully fine-tuned for life by an omniscient, benevolent designer. If favourable conditions are evidence of that designer’s intentions, then environmental upheavals and mass extinctions must also enter the reckoning. Crediting a creator with every flourishing ecosystem while excusing the destruction of countless others makes the argument immune to evidence at the cost of its explanatory value. Almost any conceivable history could then be declared evidence of perfect design.
Evolution requires no such special pleading. Organisms inherit adaptations shaped by past conditions, with no foresight about what comes next. When environments change, survival depends on circumstances, tolerances, opportunities to disperse and the capacity of populations to adapt. The subsequent diversification of survivors does not turn the preceding devastation into a plan. New evolutionary opportunities can arise from catastrophe without that catastrophe having occurred for a purpose.
The study does not settle every question about mass extinction, nor does it claim that all five great crises shared a single cause. It adds a testable framework for understanding how the state of the Earth system influences life’s vulnerability. That is how science advances: by refining explanations against evidence. The creationist picture of a world arranged for its inhabitants’ welfare, meanwhile, remains difficult to reconcile with a geological record containing so many occasions when their world became their executioner.
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