Statistical paleontology has a unique frame of reference for species loss; something the University of Chicago’s David M. Raup calls the kill curve. The crudely named graph has a simple purpose, which is to depict the average species kill for a series of waiting times.
For Raup and others, the kill curve helps delineate context for a historical question: do species go extinct because of bad genes? Or bad luck?
The bad luck scenario is what paleontology calls The Field of Bullets Theory. The bad genes scenario is what paleontology calls the Overkill theory.