Catastrophic soil erosion during the end-Permian biotic crisis
- Mark A. Sephton*1,
- Cindy V. Looy*2,
- Henk Brinkhuis*3,
- Paul B. Wignall*4,
- Jan W. de Leeuw*5 and
- Henk Visscher*6
- 1Impacts and Astromaterials Research Centre, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
- 2Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology, MRC-121, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012, USA
- 3Department of Palaeoecology, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD, Utrecht, Netherlands
- 4School of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
- 5Department of Marine Biogeochemistry and Toxicology, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB, Den Burg, Texel, Netherlands
- 6Department of Palaeoecology, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD, Utrecht, Netherlands
Abstract
Organic geochemical analyses of sedimentary organic matter from a marine Permian-Triassic transition sequence in northeastern Italy reveal a significant influx of land-derived diagenetic products of polysaccharides. This unique event reflects massive soil erosion resulting from destruction of land vegetation due to volcanogenic disturbance of atmospheric chemistry. The excessive supply of soil materials to the oceans provides a direct link between terrestrial and marine ecological crises, suggesting that ecosystem collapse on land could have contributed to the end-Permian marine extinctions.
- Permian-Triassic boundary
- ecological crisis
- mass extinction
- carbon isotope
- polysaccharide
- soil erosion
Footnotes
-
↵*m.a.sephton{at}imperial.ac.uk; looy.cindy{at}nmnh.si.edu; h.brinkhuis{at}bio.uu.nl; p.wignall{at}earth.leeds.ac.uk; deleeuw{at}nioz.nl; h.visscher{at}bio.uu.nl
-
↵GSA Data Repository item 2005184, Sample description and experimental methods, is available online at www.geosociety.org/pubs/ft2005.htm, or on request from editing{at}geosociety.org or Documents Secretary, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA.
-
- Accepted 10 August 2005.
- Received 14 April 2005.
- Revision received 3 August 2005.
- Geological Society of America
