http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=16574
Interesting to compare that story with this one:
A detailed and extensive new analysis of the fossil records of marine animals over the past 542 million years has yielded a stunning surprise. Biodiversity appears to rise and fall in mysterious cycles of 62 million years for which science has no satisfactory explanation.
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Phys-fossil-biodiversity.html