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Sixteen mass extinctions of the past 541 million years correlated with 15 pulses of Large Igneous Province volcanism and 4 large impacts

Michael R. Rampino, Ken Caldeira, and Sedelia Rodriguez · Global and Planetary Change 234, 104369 · 2024

Key finding. The ages of all six major marine mass extinctions of the last 541 million years — end-Ordovician, late Devonian, end-Guadalupian, end-Permian, end-Triassic and end-Cretaceous — correlate significantly with high-precision ages of six continental flood basalt provinces, and six minor extinctions coincide with six further flood basalts, in each case accompanied by stratigraphic mercury anomalies marking the volcanism.

A scatter plot with the ages of continental flood basalts on the horizontal axis and the ages of correlative marine extinction events on the vertical axis, both in millions of years from 0 to 550. Twelve filled points labelled with paired names — end-Ordovician with Cape St Mary's, end-Permian with Siberian, end-Cretaceous with Deccan, and so on — lie almost exactly on the one-to-one line. Four red stars mark large impact craters, including Chicxulub at the end-Cretaceous point.
Every point is an extinction plotted against the eruption it is claimed to match, and they fall on the diagonal. The red stars are the four largest well-dated impacts; only at the end-Cretaceous do an impact and a flood basalt coincide with the same extinction. Figure 2 from Rampino, Caldeira and Rodriguez (2024), Global and Planetary Change 234, 104369. Reproduced under author reuse rights. Extracted from the published PDF and resized for web display.

What question did this research address?

Mass extinctions have been attributed variously to volcanism, asteroid impact, sea-level change, and anoxia, often case by case. Dating has improved enough — high-precision uranium- lead zircon and argon-argon ages — to ask whether the coincidences hold up across the whole Phanerozoic record rather than one event at a time.

This paper asked whether the ages of mass extinctions line up with the ages of Large Igneous Province eruptions and large impacts, and whether independent chemical evidence supports the synchrony.

What did we find?

The six major extinctions, each removing 40% or more of marine genera, match the Cape St. Mary's, Viluy, Emeishan, Siberian, CAMP and Deccan basalts.

Mercury anomalies in the strata provide independent proxy evidence that the eruptions and the extinctions were synchronous, rather than merely close in a dating scheme.

Six minor extinctions, removing 15 to 25% of marine genera, coincide with six more flood basalt eruptions — Madagascar, HALIP, Paraná/Etendeka, Karoo/Ferrar, Panjal and Kalkarindji — again with associated mercury anomalies. At least three more fall near oceanic plateau volcanism in the Pacific.

The killing mechanisms come as a package. Extinctions at times of flood basalt eruption were commonly accompanied by ocean anoxia and euxinia, increased ocean acidity, high atmospheric CO2, more ultraviolet-B from ozone destruction, and pulses of high temperature.

Four of the major extinctions and one minor one coincide with concurrent mass extinctions of non-marine vertebrates, indicating the crises were global and struck land and sea together.

Impacts account for a smaller share. The end-Cretaceous extinction overlaps the Deccan eruptions but is exactly coincident with the Chicxulub impact, and the three next largest well-dated craters of 100 kilometres or more — Popigai, Morokweng and Manicouagan — fall at minor extinctions around 37, 145 and 215 million years ago.

Why does it matter?

It shifts the argument from whether volcanism can cause mass extinction to whether anything else needs to. With 12 flood basalts, at least three oceanic plateaus and the four largest impacts accounted for, the authors argue there is little room left for an alternate primary cause.

The mechanisms named — acidification, anoxia, high CO2, heat pulses — are the same processes operating today, which is what makes the deep-time record more than a curiosity about the past.

It also separates the two candidate killers cleanly. Impacts are implicated in a handful of events, most decisively at the end-Cretaceous; volcanism is implicated in nearly all of them.

Citation

Michael R. Rampino, Ken Caldeira, and Sedelia Rodriguez (2024). Sixteen mass extinctions of the past 541 million years correlated with 15 pulses of Large Igneous Province volcanism and 4 large impacts. Global and Planetary Change 234, 104369.

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