This uses the Paleobiology Database's API to gather information on the ages for all specimens of a taxon. It will also look for all descendants of the taxon. It fixes name misspellings if possible. It is basically a wrapper for get_fossil_range.
summarize_fossil_range(taxon, recent = FALSE, assume_recent_if_missing = TRUE)
a single row data.frame of max_ma and min_ma for the specimens, with rowname equal to taxon input
The scientific name of the taxon you want the range of occurrences of
If TRUE, forces the minimum age to be zero
If TRUE, any taxon missing from pbdb is assumed to be recent