T174 Foraminiferal Signals of Major Events in Mesozoic–Cenozoic Earth History

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Portland Ballroom 254 (Hybrid Room)

A REMARKABLY RESILIENT LATEST CRETACEOUS MARINE CARBON CYCLE

Paper number: T174-15
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:55 PM – 5:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

It is generally agreed that flood basalt volcanism drove two of largest mass extinction events in earth history: the Permian-Triassic mass extinction and the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction. In contrast, the eruption of massive flood basalts in India that coincided with the late Maastrichtian warming event had minor effects on marine ecosystems due to long-term changes in the earth system. What’s more, species and ecosystems appear surprisingly resilient to the severe impact winter following the Chicxulub impact. As Vermeij long ago noted, the most effective way to drive a global mass extinction is to take out the primary producers. Yet global darkness on the order of years, accompanied by global cooling of an astonishing >25ºC for decades to centuries, only appears to have driven the extinction of an (roughly) estimated 75% of taxa alive at the time and a ~50% reduction in global ocean primary productivity. This talk will provide a synthetic overview of the events and dynamics of marine ecosystems in the latest Cretaceous through Paleocene. In this context, we will consider the dynamics of the marine carbon cycle in response to Deccan volcanism, the Chicxulub impact, the mass extinction at the K-Pg boundary, and long-term changes in the Paleocene.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 53, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2021AM-370897

© Copyright 2021 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.