Deccan flood basalts at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary?

Courtillot, Vincent; Besse, J.; Vandamme, Didier; Montigny, R.; Jaeger, Jean‐Jacques; Cappetta, Henri

doi:10.1016/0012-821x(86)90118-4

Cited by 588 publications

(189 citation statements)

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“…Severe extinctions of marine (Ϸ80 families) and continental (Ϸ100 families) organisms (2) within a few tens of thousands of years of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) indicate the abrupt imposition of an environmental stress to which they were poorly adapted (1). Two long-competing hypotheses to explain this biotic crisis attribute marked ''greenhouse'' warming to either volcanic degassing of mantle volatiles (especially CO 2 ) during the eruption of the Deccan Traps in India (3,4) or CO 2 release by a substantial extraterrestrial impact event (5). The bolide impact is widely accepted to have formed the Ϸ100-km diameter Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico (6).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

Beerling

Lomax

Royer

et al. 2002

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

172

100

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The end-Cretaceous mass extinctions, 65 million years ago, profoundly influenced the course of biotic evolution. These extinctions coincided with a major extraterrestrial impact event and massive volcanism in India. Determining the relative importance of each event as a driver of environmental and biotic change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) crucially depends on constraining the mass of CO2 injected into the atmospheric carbon reservoir. Using the inverse relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the stomatal index of land plant leaves, we reconstruct Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary atmospheric CO2 concentration (pCO2) levels with special emphasis on providing a pCO2 estimate directly above the KTB. Our record shows stable Late Cretaceous͞Early Tertiary background pCO2 levels of 350 -500 ppm by volume, but with a marked increase to at least 2,300 ppm by volume within 10,000 years of the KTB. Numerical simulations with a global biogeochemical carbon cycle model indicate that CO2 outgassing during the eruption of the Deccan Trap basalts fails to fully account for the inferred pCO2 increase. Instead, we calculate that the postboundary pCO2 rise is most consistent with the instantaneous transfer of Ϸ4,600 Gt C from the lithic to the atmospheric reservoir by a large extraterrestrial bolide impact. A resultant climatic forcing of ؉12 W⅐m ؊2 would have been sufficient to warm the Earth's surface by Ϸ7.5°C, in the absence of counter forcing by sulfate aerosols. This finding reinforces previous evidence for major climatic warming after the KTB impact and implies that severe and abrupt global warming during the earliest Paleocene was an important factor in biotic extinction at the KTB.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

Beerling

Lomax

Royer

et al. 2002

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

172

100

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“…The eruption of flood basalts coincides with several large mass extinctions (e.g. Courtillot et al 1986;Renne et al 1995;White 2002;Courtillot 2003). Though the largest mass extinctions may have required the combined effects of flood volcanism and a bolide impact (White and Saunders 2005), it is clear that massive volcanic eruptions may cause a cooling of the climate on short time scales through silicate and sulphate aerosols (McCormick et al 1995) and warming on a longer time scale through the injection of massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere as described in Sect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Water, Life, and Planetary Geodynamical Evolution

et al. 2007

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In our search for life on other planets over the past decades, we have come to understand that the solid terrestrial planets provide much more than merely a substrate on which life may develop. Large-scale exchange of heat and volatile species between planetary interiors and hydrospheres/atmospheres, as well as the presence of a magnetic field, are important factors contributing to the habitability of a planet. This chapter reviews these processes, their mutual interactions, and the role life plays in regulating or modulating them.

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“…The geochronology of impact craters 247 Courtillot et al, 1988). Other mass extinctions have been explained as sudden catastrophes mainly by analogy with the K-Pg event (e.g.…”

Section: Other K-pg Craters Including Boltyshmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Geochronology of Impact Craters

Kelley

Sherlock

2012

Impact Cratering

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Deccan flood basalts at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary?

Cited by 588 publications

References 42 publications

An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

Water, Life, and Planetary Geodynamical Evolution

The Geochronology of Impact Craters

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Deccan flood basalts at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary?

Cited by 588 publications

References 42 publications

An atmospheric p CO 2 reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

An atmospheric p CO 2 reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

Water, Life, and Planetary Geodynamical Evolution

The Geochronology of Impact Craters

Contact Info

Product

Resources

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An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils

An atmospheric p CO ₂ reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils