Figure 2

Calculation of extinction times. A. An arbitrary trunk branch (highlighted in red) divides a tree into ancestral (orange shading) and descendant (green shading) parts. B. Terminal nodes (isolates) are arranged along the time axis; the overlap area denotes the period of time during which the descendant lineages drive the ancestral lineages to extinction. C. Extinction curve of the isolates from the ancestral part of the tree, for the overlap interval shown in (B); the 90% extinction point is indicated.