Fern Macroflora Identified in the Basal Danian of the Raton Formation Supports Palynological Signal of a Widespread “Postdisaster” Fern Flora

Berry, Keith

doi:10.1086/723565

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Further north, the Raton Basin of New Mexico and Colorado preserves a well-defined K-Pg event bed and was the primary location of early work on K-Pg plant extinctions following the publication of the Alvarez hypothesis (Tschudy et al, 1984;Wolfe and Upchurch, 1986). The area has received renewed attention, particularly concerning the basalmost Paleocene floras (Berry, 2019(Berry, , 2023.…”

Section: North Americamentioning

confidence: 99%

The end-Cretaceous plant extinction: Heterogeneity, ecosystem transformation, and insights for the future

Wilf

Carvalho

Stiles

2023

Camb. prisms Extinction

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The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction was geologically instantaneous, causing the most drastic extinction rates in Earth’s History. The rapid species losses and environmental destruction from the Chicxulub impact at 66.02 Ma made the K–Pg the most comparable past event to today’s projected “sixth” mass extinction. The extinction famously eliminated major clades of animals and plankton. However, for land plants, losses primarily occurred among species observed in regional studies but left no global trace at the family or major-clade level, leading to questions about whether there was a significant K–Pg plant extinction. We review emerging paleobotanical data from the Americas and argue that the evidence strongly favors profound (generally >50%), geographically heterogeneous species losses and recovery consistent with mass extinction. The heterogeneity appears to reflect several factors, including distance from the impact site and marine and latitudinal buffering of the impact winter. The ensuing transformations have affected all land life, including true angiosperm dominance in the world’s forests, the birth of the hyperdiverse Neotropical rainforest biome, and evolutionary radiations leading to many crown angiosperm clades. Although the worst outcomes are still preventable, the sixth mass extinction could mirror the K–Pg event by eliminating comparable numbers of plant species in a geologic instant, impoverishing and eventually transforming terrestrial ecosystems while having little effect on global plant-family diversity.

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