U-Pb constraints on pulsed eruption of the Deccan Traps across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
Two timelines for extinction
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs 66 million years ago was correlated with two extreme events: The Chicxulub impact occurred at roughly the same time that massive amounts of lava were erupting from the Deccan Traps (see the Perspective by Burgess). Sprain et al. used argon-argon dating of the volcanic ash from the Deccan Traps to argue that a steady eruption of the flood basalts mostly occurred after the Chicxulub impact. Schoene et al. used uranium-lead dating of zircons from ash beds and concluded that four large magmatic pulses occurred during the flood basalt eruption, the first of which preceded the Chicxulub impact. Whatever the correct ordering of events, better constraints on the timing and rates of the eruption will help elucidate how volcanic gas influenced climate.
Abstract
Temporal correlation between some continental flood basalt eruptions and mass extinctions has been proposed to indicate causality, with eruptive volatile release driving environmental degradation and extinction. We tested this model for the Deccan Traps flood basalt province, which, along with the Chicxulub bolide impact, is implicated in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction approximately 66 million years ago. We estimated Deccan eruption rates with uranium-lead (U-Pb) zircon geochronology and resolved four high-volume eruptive periods. According to this model, maximum eruption rates occurred before and after the K-Pg extinction, with one such pulse initiating tens of thousands of years prior to both the bolide impact and extinction. These findings support extinction models that incorporate both catastrophic events as drivers of environmental deterioration associated with the K-Pg extinction and its aftermath.
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Supplementary Material
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References and Notes
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Received: 27 July 2018
Accepted: 8 January 2019
Acknowledgments
This paper benefited from comments made by three anonymous reviewers and discussions with A. Maloof and J. Higgins. Field assistance was provided by M. Coronado, P. Kemeny, and V. Sordet. J. Punekar provided critical field assistance and sample recollection. We also thank A. Chen, S. Gwizd, A. Hager, and D. Okhai for tirelessly separating zircons from redbole samples. Funding: Field and lab work was supported by NSF grant EAR-1454430 (B.S. and G.K.) and by the Princeton Department of Geosciences Scott Fund. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. This paper is LLNL contribution LLNL-JRNL-755419. Author contributions: All authors except C.B.K. participated in fieldwork and sample collection; U-Pb geochronology was done by K.M.S., M.P.E., and B.S.; Bayesian modeling was done by C.B.K., K.M.S., and B.S.; and the manuscript and figures were prepared by B.S., M.P.E., and K.M.S. with input from G.K., T.A., C.B.K., and S.F.R.K. Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare. Data and materials availability: All methods, data, and codes used for modeling are available in the manuscript or supplementary materials.
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Funding Information
NSF Office of the Director: EAR-1454430
A Dominant Role for The K-Pg Impact
A Dominant Role for
The K-Pg Impact
Contrary to the Perspective "Deciphering mass extinction triggers" (S. Burgess, 22 February 2019) commenting on this Report, the question of what wiped out 65% of species 66 million years ago has not become "a keen debate between two potential killers." Massive volcanic eruptions may still be found to have played a role in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, but the large impact that struck at the geologic moment of extinction cannot be displaced as the primary trigger of that mass extinction.
Radiometric dating, as reported in the same issue of Science (1, 2), has indeed been narrowing the apparent temporal gap between huge volcanic outbursts from the Deccan Traps of India and the impact of a 10-kilometer body into the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. But it has been specialists in paleontology, geochemistry, mineralogy, and stratigraphy who found long ago found that worldwide in the geologic record, debris from the impact coincides precisely with the disappearance of species lost in the mass extinction (3).
From that coincidence, researchers inferred that species lost in the mass extinction disappeared in the same geologic instant in which the impact laid down its debris around the globe. All trophic and taxonomic levels were affected, from protozoans to single-celled plants and large marine animals. Just as clearly, this coincidence of impact and extinction is not an artifact of an imperfect fossil record or a gap in the stratigraphic record (4, 5).
In contrast, no one has ever found any trace of the great Deccan eruptions in the fossil record of the K-Pg mass extinction. So far, geochronologists using different radiometric dating techniques cannot agree on the order of events around the K-PG (1, 2, Burgess). So Deccan volcanism may have softened up the biosphere before the impact, delayed the recovery from the mass extinction, or even been triggered by the impact itself as a reinforcing driver of extinction (6).
However the role of volcanism in the K-Pg extinction plays out, the large impact 66 million years ago was a dominant killer, and according to all currently available data, was the only killer responsible for the K-Pg mass extinction.
Richard A. Kerr1*, Peter D. Ward2
1American Association for the Advancement of Science/Science, retired
2Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. B. Schoene et al., Science 363, 862 (2019).
2. C. J. Sprain et al., Science 363, 866 (2019).
3. P. Schulte et al., Science 327, 1214 (2010).
4. D. J. Nichols, K. R. Johnson, Plants and the K-T Boundary (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2008), p. 280.
5. C. R. Marshall and P. D. Ward, Science 274, 1360 (1996).
6. M. A. Richards et al., Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 127, 1507-1520 (2015).