REVISED AGE FOR THE GOSSES BLUFF IMPACT STRUCTURE, NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA, BASED ON40Ar/39Ar DATING

Earth and Moon impact flux increased at the end of the Paleozoic

The terrestrial impact crater record is commonly assumed to be biased, with erosion thought to eliminate older craters, even on stable terrains. Given that the same projectile population strikes Earth and the Moon, terrestrial selection effects can be quantified by using a method to date lunar craters with diameters greater than 10 kilometers and younger than 1 billion years. We found that the impact rate increased by a factor of 2.6 about 290 million years ago. The terrestrial crater record shows similar results, suggesting that the deficit of large terrestrial craters between 300 million and 650 million years ago relative to more recent times stems from a lower impact flux, not preservation bias. The almost complete absence of terrestrial craters older than 650 million years may indicate a massive global-scale erosion event near that time.

Biotic and environmental dynamics through the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous transition: evidence for protracted faunal and ecological turnover

The Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous interval represents a time of environmental upheaval and cataclysmic events, combined with disruptions to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Historically, the Jurassic/Cretaceous (J/K) boundary was classified as one of eight mass extinctions. However, more recent research has largely overturned this view, revealing a much more complex pattern of biotic and abiotic dynamics than has previously been appreciated. Here, we present a synthesis of our current knowledge of Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous events, focusing particularly on events closest to the J/K boundary. We find evidence for a combination of short-term catastrophic events, large-scale tectonic processes and environmental perturbations, and major clade interactions that led to a seemingly dramatic faunal and ecological turnover in both the marine and terrestrial realms. This is coupled with a great reduction in global biodiversity which might in part be explained by poor sampling. Very few groups appear to have been entirely resilient to this J/K boundary 'event', which hints at a 'cascade model' of ecosystem changes driving faunal dynamics. Within terrestrial ecosystems, larger, more-specialised organisms, such as saurischian dinosaurs, appear to have suffered the most. Medium-sized tetanuran theropods declined, and were replaced by larger-bodied groups, and basal eusauropods were replaced by neosauropod faunas. The ascent of paravian theropods is emphasised by escalated competition with contemporary pterosaur groups, culminating in the explosive radiation of birds, although the timing of this is obfuscated by biases in sampling. Smaller, more ecologically diverse terrestrial non-archosaurs, such as lissamphibians and mammaliaforms, were comparatively resilient to extinctions, instead documenting the origination of many extant groups around the J/K boundary. In the marine realm, extinctions were focused on low-latitude, shallow marine shelf-dwelling faunas, corresponding to a significant eustatic sea-level fall in the latest Jurassic. More mobile and ecologically plastic marine groups, such as ichthyosaurs, survived the boundary relatively unscathed. High rates of extinction and turnover in other macropredaceous marine groups, including plesiosaurs, are accompanied by the origin of most major lineages of extant sharks. Groups which occupied both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, including crocodylomorphs, document a selective extinction in shallow marine forms, whereas turtles appear to have diversified. These patterns suggest that different extinction selectivity and ecological processes were operating between marine and terrestrial ecosystems, which were ultimately important in determining the fates of many key groups, as well as the origins of many major extant lineages. We identify a series of potential abiotic candidates for driving these patterns, including multiple bolide impacts, several episodes of flood basalt eruptions, dramatic climate change, and major disruptions to oceanic systems. The J/K transition therefore, although not a mass extinction, represents an important transitional period in the co-evolutionary history of life on Earth.

Comparing the evidence relevant to impact and flood basalt at times of major mass extinctions

The five major mass extinctions identified in 1982 by Raup and Sepkoski have expanded to six, with the suggestion that the Permian-Triassic extinction was a double event. Is there a general explanation for great mass extinctions, or can they result from different triggers, or even from internal system instabilities? The two most-discussed candidates for a general extinction mechanism are impacts and flood-basalt eruptions. A compilation of evidence for impact at the times of mass extinctions shows that this cause is abundantly confirmed in the case of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction and the late Eocene, which is a time of minor and gradual extinction, but little or no evidence connects other major extinctions to impact. On the other hand, there is a remarkable time correlation between flood basalts and four major extinctions, but no other evidence that flood basalts cause mass extinctions. The evidence for an impact-extinction linkage is strikingly different from that for a connection between flood basalts and extinctions. Flood basalts cover larger areas than craters and their associated thick ejecta blankets, which are thus less likely to be found. Impacts distribute proxies globally at instantaneous time horizons, whereas flood-basalt events are extended in time, and no remote proxies have been recognized. Many global killing mechanisms have been proposed in the case of impacts, but few have been suggested for flood basalts. It is possible that flood basalts are triggered by impact, but it is not obvious how impacts could result from anything other than chance. The hypothesis that impacts are the general cause of mass extinctions has not received supporting evidence, but has not been falsified. The hypothesis that flood basalts are the general cause of mass extinctions is supported by evidence from timing, but is not susceptible to falsification. Other candidates for general extinction causes, especially sea-level changes and system instabilities, would require separate treatment. The question is still very much open.