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Time Scales of Critical Events Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary
Impact Dating
The large mass extinction of terrestrial and marine life—most notably, non-avian dinosaurs—occurred around 66 million years ago, at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. But attributing the cause to a large asteroid impact depends on precisely dating material from the impact with indicators of ecological stress and environmental change in the rock record. Renne et al. (p. 684; see the Perspective by Pälike) acquired high-precision radiometric dates of stratigraphic layers surrounding the boundary, demonstrating that the impact occurred within 33,000 years of the mass extinction. The data also constrain the length of time in which the atmospheric carbon cycle was severely disrupted to less than 5000 years. Because the climate in the late Cretaceous was becoming unstable, the large-impact event appears to have triggered a state-shift in an already stressed global ecosystem.
Abstract
Mass extinctions manifest in Earth's geologic record were turning points in biotic evolution. We present 40Ar/39Ar data that establish synchrony between the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and associated mass extinctions with the Chicxulub bolide impact to within 32,000 years. Perturbation of the atmospheric carbon cycle at the boundary likely lasted less than 5000 years, exhibiting a recovery time scale two to three orders of magnitude shorter than that of the major ocean basins. Low-diversity mammalian fauna in the western Williston Basin persisted for as little as 20,000 years after the impact. The Chicxulub impact likely triggered a state shift of ecosystems already under near-critical stress.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S7
Tables S1 to S4
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Science
Volume 339 | Issue 6120
8 February 2013
8 February 2013
Copyright
Copyright © 2013, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 20 September 2012
Accepted: 14 December 2012
Published in print: 8 February 2013
Acknowledgments
We thank the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, U.C. Berkeley's Esper S. Larsen Jr. Fund, and NSF (grants EAR 0844098 and EAR 0451802) for support of B.G.C.'s work; the Natural Environment Research Council for continued funding of the Argon Isotope Facility at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre; the GTSNext project of the Marie Curie Foundation; the Marie Curie Fellowship program for support of L.E.M.; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (grant 863.07.009) for support of K.F.K.; F. Maurrasse for providing the tektites; W. Alvarez, A. Barnosky, W. Clemens, T. White, and G. Wilson for discussion and comments on the manuscript; and three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. Data are available in the supplementary materials.
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