Crises and extinction in the fossil record—a role for ultraviolet radiation?

Paleobiology ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Cockell
Keyword(s):  
Ozone Depletion ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Initial Drop ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Stratospheric Dust ◽  
Impact Events

AbstractA number of natural events can cause ozone depletion, including asteroid and comet impacts, large-scale volcanism involving the stratospheric injection of chlorine, and close cosmic events such as supernovae. These events have previously been postulated to have been sole or contributory causes of mass extinctions. Following such events, UV-B radiation would have been elevated at the surface of the earth. The possibilities for detecting elevated UV-B as a kill mechanism in the fossil record are discussed. In the case of impact events and large-scale volcanism, the taxa affected by increases in UV-B radiation are likely to be similar to those affected by cooling and by the initial drop in irradiance caused by stratospheric dust injection. Thus UV-B may synergistically exacerbate the effects of these other environmental changes and contribute to stress in the biosphere, although UV-B alone is unlikely to cause a mass extinction. By the same token, however, this similarity in affected taxa is likely to make delineating the involvement of UV-B radiation in the fossil record more difficult. Cosmic events such as supernovae may produce smaller extinction events, but ones that are “cleaner” UV catastrophes without the involvement of other environmental changes.

Summary

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. J. Newman ◽  
R. G. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Extinction Rate ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Power Law Distribution ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Fossil Data

In this book we have studied a large number of recent quantitative models aimed at explaining a variety of large-scale trends seen in the fossil record. These trends include the occurrence of mass extinctions, the distribution of the sizes of extinction events, the distribution of the lifetimes of taxa, the distribution of the numbers of species per genus, and the apparent decline in the average extinction rate. None of the models presented match all the fossil data perfectly, but all of them offer some suggestion of possible mechanisms which may be important to the processes of extinction and origination. In this chapter we conclude our review by briefly summarizing the properties and predictions of each of the models once more. Much of the interest in these models has focused on their ability (or lack of ability) to predict the observed values of exponents governing distributions of a number of quantities. In Table 7.1 we summarize the values of these exponents for each of the models. Most of the models we have described attempt to provide possible explanations for a few specific observations. (1) The fossil record appears to have a power-law (i.e., scale-free) distribution of the sizes of extinction events, with an exponent close to 2 (section 1.2.2.1). (2) The distribution of the lifetimes of genera also appears to follow a power law, with exponent about 1.7 (section 1.2.2.4). (3) The number of species per genus appears to follow a power law with exponent about 1.5 (section 1.2.3.1). One of the first models to attempt an explanation of these observations was the NK model of Kauffman and co-workers. In this model, extinction is driven by revolutionary avalanches. When tuned to the critical point between chaotic and frozen regimes, the model displays a power-law distribution of avalanche sizes with an exponent of about 1. It has been suggested that this could in turn lead to a power-law distribution of the sizes of extinction events, although the value of 1 for the exponent is not in agreement with the value 2 measured in the fossil extinction record.

Flood Basalts and Mass Extinctions

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 275-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Clapham ◽  
Paul R. Renne
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Flood Basalt ◽  
Respiratory Physiology ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Flood Basalts ◽  
Volatile Release ◽  
Ocean Carbon ◽  
Biological Extinction ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Environmental Disruption

Flood basalts were Earth's largest volcanic episodes that, along with related intrusions, were often emplaced rapidly and coincided with environmental disruption: oceanic anoxic events, hyperthermals, and mass extinction events. Volatile emissions, both from magmatic degassing and vaporized from surrounding rock, triggered short-term cooling and longer-term warming, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation. The magnitude of biological extinction varied considerably, from small events affecting only select groups to the largest extinction of the Phanerozoic, with less-active organisms and those with less-developed respiratory physiology faring especially poorly. The disparate environmental and biological outcomes of different flood basalt events may at first order be explained by variations in the rate of volatile release modulated by longer trends in ocean carbon cycle buffering and the composition of marine ecosystems. Assessing volatile release, environmental change, and biological extinction at finer temporal resolution should be a top priority to refine ancient hyperthermals as analogs for anthropogenic climate change. ▪ Flood basalts, the largest volcanic events in Earth history, triggered dramatic environmental changes on land and in the oceans. ▪ Rapid volcanic carbon emissions led to ocean warming, acidification, and deoxygenation that often caused widespread animal extinctions. ▪ Animal physiology played a key role in survival during flood basalt extinctions, with reef builders such as corals being especially vulnerable. ▪ The rate and duration of volcanic carbon emission controlled the type of environmental disruption and the severity of biological extinction.

Community Replacement Pathways: What Do Fossil Sequences Reveal About Marine Ecosystem Transitions?

1990 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
William Miller
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Time And Energy

Paleontologists have lavished much time and energy on description and explanation of large-scale patterns in the fossil record (e.g., mass extinctions, histories of monophyletic taxa, deployment of major biogeographic units), while paying comparatively little attention to biologic patterns preserved only in local stratigraphic sequences. Interpretation of the large-scale patterns will always be seen as the chief justification for the science of paleontology, but solving problems framed by long time spans and large areas is rife with tenuous inference and patterns are prone to varied interpretation by different investigators using virtually the same data sets (as in the controversy over ultimate cause of the terminal Cretaceous extinctions). In other words, the large-scale patterns in the history of life are the true philosophical property of paleontology, but there will always be serious problems in attempting to resolve processes that transpired over millions to hundreds-of-millions of years and encompassed vast areas of seafloor or landscape. By contrast, less spectacular and more commonplace changes in local habitats (often related to larger-scale events and cycles) and attendant biologic responses are closer to our direct experience of the living world and should be easier to interpret unequivocally. These small-scale responses are reflected in the fossil record at the scale of local outcrops.

scholarly journals Fossil-calibrated molecular phylogeny of atlantid heteropods (Gastropoda, Pterotracheoidea)

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Wall-Palmer ◽  
Arie W. Janssen ◽  
Erica Goetze ◽  
Le Qin Choo ◽  
Lisette Mekkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Rapid Diversification ◽  
Maximum Likelihood Phylogeny ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Ribosomal Rrna

Abstract Background The aragonite shelled, planktonic gastropod family Atlantidae (shelled heteropods) is likely to be one of the first groups to be impacted by imminent ocean changes, including ocean warming and ocean acidification. With a fossil record spanning at least 100 Ma, atlantids have experienced and survived global-scale ocean changes and extinction events in the past. However, the diversification patterns and tempo of evolution in this family are largely unknown. Results Based on a concatenated maximum likelihood phylogeny of three genes (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial DNA, 28S and 18S ribosomal rRNA) we show that the three extant genera of the family Atlantidae, Atlanta, Protatlanta and Oxygyrus, form monophyletic groups. The genus Atlanta is split into two groups, one exhibiting smaller, well ornamented shells, and the other having larger, less ornamented shells. The fossil record, in combination with a fossil-calibrated phylogeny, suggests that large scale atlantid extinction was accompanied by considerable and rapid diversification over the last 25 Ma, potentially driven by vicariance events. Conclusions Now confronted with a rapidly changing modern ocean, the ability of atlantids to survive past global change crises gives some optimism that they may be able to persist through the Anthropocene.

The biology of mass extinction: a palaeontological view

1989 ◽  
Vol 325 (1228) ◽  
pp. 357-368 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
Ecological Groups ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Evolutionary Patterns ◽  
Data Set ◽  
High Species Richness ◽  
Extinction Events

Extinctions are not biologically random: certain taxa or functional/ecological groups are more extinction-prone than others. Analysis of molluscan survivorship patterns for the end-Cretaceous mass extinctions suggests that some traits that tend to confer extinction resistance during times of normal (‘background’) levels of extinction are ineffectual during mass extinction. For genera, high species-richness and possession of widespread individual species imparted extinction-resistance during background times but not during the mass extinction, when overall distribution of the genus was an important factor. Reanalysis of Hoffman’s (1986) data ( Neues Jb. Geol. Palaont. Abh. 172, 219) on European bivalves, and preliminary analysis of a new northern European data set, reveals a similar change in survivorship rules, as do data scattered among other taxa and extinction events. Thus taxa and adaptations can be lost not because they were poorly adapted by the standards of the background processes that constitute the bulk of geological time, but because they lacked - or were not linked to - the organismic, species-level or clade-level traits favoured under mass-extinction conditions. Mass extinctions can break the hegemony of species-rich, well-adapted clades and thereby permit radiation of taxa that had previously been minor faunal elements; no net increase in the adaptation of the biota need ensue. Although some large-scale evolutionary trends transcend mass extinctions, post-extinction evolutionary pathways are often channelled in directions not predictable from evolutionary patterns during background times.

Chapter 1.2 Antarctic volcanism: volcanology and palaeoenvironmental overview

2021 ◽  
pp. M55-2020-1 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Smellie
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Critical Parameters ◽  
Rift System ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Volcanic Arc ◽  
Principal Characteristics ◽  
West Antarctic ◽  
Alkaline Volcanism ◽  
Break Up

AbstractSince Jurassic time (c. 200 Ma), Antarctica has had a greater diversity of volcanism than other southern continents. It includes: (1) voluminous mafic and felsic volcanism associated with the break-up of Gondwana; (2) a long-lived continental margin volcanic arc, including back-arc alkaline volcanism linked to slab rollback; (3) small-volume mafic alkaline volcanism associated with slab-window formation; and (4) one of Earth's major continental rift zones, the West Antarctic Rift System (WARS), with its numerous large alkaline central volcanoes. Several of Antarctica's volcanoes are still active. This chapter is a review of the major volcanic episodes and their principal characteristics, in their tectonic, volcanological and palaeoenvironmental contexts. Jurassic Gondwana break-up was associated with large-scale volcanism that caused global environmental changes and associated mass extinctions. The volcanic arc was a major extensional arc characterized by alternating volcanic flare-ups and lulls. The Neogene rift-related alkaline volcanism is dominated by effusive glaciovolcanic eruptions, overwhelmingly as both pāhoehoe- and ‘a‘ā-sourced lava-fed deltas. The rift is conspicuously poor in pyroclastic rocks due to the advection and removal of tephra erupted during glacial intervals. Volcanological investigations of the Neogene volcanism have also significantly increased our knowledge of the critical parameters and development of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Extinction In The Fossil Record

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. J. Newman ◽  
R. G. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Mathematical Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
External Stresses ◽  
Extinction Events

Of the estimated one to four billion species that have existed on the Earth since life first appeared here (Simpson 1952), less than 50 million are still alive today (May 1990). All the others became extinct, typically within about ten million years (My) of their first appearance. It is clearly a question of some interest what the causes are of this high turnover, and much research has been devoted to the topic (see, for example, Raup (1991a) and Glen (1994) and references therein). Most of this work has focussed on the causes of extinction of individual species, or on the causes of identifiable mass extinction events, such as the end-Cretaceous event. However, a recent body of work has examined instead the statistical features of the history of extinction, using mathematical models of extinction processes and comparing their predictions with global properties of the fossil record. In this book we will study these models, describing their mathematical basis, the extinction mechanisms that they incorporate, and their predictions. Before we start looking at the models however, we need to learn something about the trends in fossil and other data which they attempt to model. This is the topic of this introductory chapter. Those well versed in the large-scale patterns seen in the Phanerozoic fossil record may wish to skip or merely browse this chapter, passing on to chapter 2, where the discussion of the models begins. There are two primary colleges of thought about the causes of extinction. The traditional view, still held by most palaeontologists as well as many in other disciplines, is that extinction is the result of external stresses imposed on the ecosystem by the environment (Benton 1991; Hoffmann and Parsons 1991; Parsons 1993). There are indeed excellent arguments in favor of this viewpoint, since we have good evidence for particular exogenous causes for a number of major extinction events in the Earth's history, such as marine regression (sealevel drop) for the late-Permian event (Jablonski 1985; Hallam 1989), and bolide impact for the end-Cretaceous (Alvarez et al. 1980; Alvarez 1983, 1987).

scholarly journals Appearance and disappearance rates of Phanerozoic marine animal paleocommunities

Geology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.D. Muscente ◽  
Rowan C. Martindale ◽  
Anirudh Prabhu ◽  
Xiaogang Ma ◽  
Peter Fox ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Marine Animal ◽  
Extinction Rate ◽  
Biological Interactions ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Turnover Rates ◽  
Biodiversity Crisis ◽  
Taxonomic Changes ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Fossil Data

Ecological observations and paleontological data show that communities of organisms recur in space and time. Various observations suggest that communities largely disappear in extinction events and appear during radiations. This hypothesis, however, has not been tested on a large scale due to a lack of methods for analyzing fossil data, identifying communities, and quantifying their turnover. We demonstrate an approach for quantifying turnover of communities over the Phanerozoic Eon. Using network analysis of fossil occurrence data, we provide the first estimates of appearance and disappearance rates for marine animal paleocommunities in the 100 stages of the Phanerozoic record. Our analysis of 124,605 fossil collections (representing 25,749 living and extinct marine animal genera) shows that paleocommunity disappearance and appearance rates are generally highest in mass extinctions and recovery intervals, respectively, with rates three times greater than background levels. Although taxonomic change is, in general, a fair predictor of ecologic reorganization, the variance is high, and ecologic and taxonomic changes were episodically decoupled at times in the past. Extinction rate, therefore, is an imperfect proxy for ecologic change. The paleocommunity turnover rates suggest that efforts to assess the ecological consequences of the present-day biodiversity crisis should focus on the selectivity of extinctions and changes in the prevalence of biological interactions.

scholarly journals Fossil-calibrated molecular phylogeny of atlantid heteropods (Gastropoda, Pterotracheoidea)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Wall-Palmer ◽  
Arie W Janssen ◽  
Erica Goetze ◽  
Le Qin Choo ◽  
Lisette Mekkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Rapid Diversification ◽  
Maximum Likelihood Phylogeny ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Ribosomal Rrna

Abstract Background: The aragonite shelled, planktonic gastropod family Atlantidae (shelled heteropods) is likely to be one of the first groups to be impacted by imminent ocean changes, including ocean warming and ocean acidification. With a fossil record spanning at least 100 Million years (Ma), atlantids have experienced and survived global-scale ocean changes and extinction events in the past. However, the diversification patterns and tempo of evolution in this family are largely unknown. Results: Based on a concatenated maximum likelihood phylogeny of three genes (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 mitochondrial DNA, 28S and 18S ribosomal rRNA) we show that the three extant genera of the family Atlantidae, Atlanta, Protatlanta and Oxygyrus, form monophyletic groups. The genus Atlanta is split into two groups, one exhibiting smaller, well ornamented shells, and the other having larger, less ornamented shells. The fossil record, in combination with a fossil-calibrated phylogeny, suggests that large scale atlantid extinction was accompanied by considerable and rapid diversification over the last 25 Ma, potentially driven by vicariance events. Conclusions: Now confronted with a rapidly changing modern ocean, the ability of atlantids to survive past global change crises gives some optimism that they may be able to persist through the Anthropocene.

Climate modelling of mass-extinction events: a review

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Feulner
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Climate Modelling ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

AbstractDespite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been investigated, including impacts of asteroids or comets, large-scale volcanic eruptions, effects from changes in the distribution of continents caused by plate tectonics, and biological factors, to name but a few. Many of these suggested drivers involve or indeed require changes of Earth's climate, which then affect the biosphere of our planet, causing a global reduction in the diversity of biological species. It can be argued, therefore, that a detailed understanding of these climatic variations and their effects on ecosystems are prerequisites for a solution to the enigma of biological extinctions. Apart from investigations of the paleoclimate data of the time periods of mass extinctions, climate-modelling experiments should be able to shed some light on these dramatic events. Somewhat surprisingly, however, only a few comprehensive modelling studies of the climate changes associated with extinction events have been undertaken. These studies will be reviewed in this paper. Furthermore, the role of modelling in extinction research in general and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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