Tag: K-Pg extinction

News from the Chicxulub drilling project

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Artist’s impression of an asteroid slamming into the shallow sea off the present Yucatán Peninsula about 65 Ma ago (Credit: Donald E. Davis of NASA)

Aimed at resolving the impact versus volcanism debate about the causes of the K-Pg mass extinction, the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) began drilling into the focus of the Chicxulub impact structure off the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico in 2016. The project recovered 830 m of rock core, of which  about 140 cm contained the boundary between tsunami deposits and the post-impact marine limestones of Danian Age (basal Palaeogene); as close as one can get to the moment when the asteroid hit the sea floor. That an impact close to the start of the Danian had taken place was first discovered from abnormally high concentrations of the platinum-group metal iridium (Ir), shocked mineral grains and glass spherules, among other anomalous materials, in 350 marine and terrestrial sections across the globe. If the Chicxulub crater contained similar features to these ‘smoking guns’ then the link might seem to be done and dusted. A report on the crucial few centimetres from the Chicxulub drill core shows this to be the case (Goderis, S. and 32 others 2021. Globally distributed iridium layer preserved within the Chicxulub impact structure. Science Advances, v. 9, article eabe3647; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe3647).

Yet the boundary layer at Chicxulub could not have been emplaced at the instant of impact. The gigantic power involved would have flung debris outwards, including seawater as well as the rocks that were once at considerable depth below the seabed. Much in the manner of a stone falling into a pond molten crust would have rebounded from the initial strike to form an axial peak and a ringed basin. Likewise huge tsunamis would have rolled away from the impact, then to return and fill the new basin, perhaps several times. Some of the ejected debris would have reached low orbit in the form of pulverised rock and asteroid to remain there for a while before completely falling back to Earth. The core includes about 130 m of once partly molten debris (suevite) above more-or-less intact granitic basement. Only the top 3.5 m show signs of having been deposited in water; fine-grained, well-sorted and laminated suevite containing clasts of once molten material and even late-Cretaceous foraminifera tests, formed probably by the refilling of the impact basin during the backflow of tusunamis. A mere 3 cm of silt and clay just below marine limestones has yielded the characteristic high Ir and nickel concentrations. This Ir-rich layer also contains the earliest Palaeocene foraminifera.

Grains in the Ir-rich layer were the last to settle, the main question being ‘How long after the impact took place did that happen?’ Being very fine they are estimated to have fallen-out from suspension and circulation in the atmosphere over a period of up to a few decades. Coarser material below them would have taken no longer than a few weeks to years. Yet these estimates are based mainly on Stokes’ law governing particles of different sizes falling through a viscous fluid. Taking an empirical view based on actual rates of clay sedimentation in the ocean (~5 mm per thousand years) the Ir-rich layer may have been deposited over 6000 years. That is hardly the ‘instant of the impact’. But the timing does say something interesting about the return of life to the seas; in geological terms it was swift, if the forams are anything to go by. Since the tsunamis swept onto and drained the surrounding land masses a great deal of nutrient would have ended up in the sea awaiting organisms at the bottom of the food chain. Biomarker chemicals and trace fossils in the Ir-rich layer suggest  thriving bacterial communities, with forams, crustacea and larval fish.

The authors conclude ‘The clear association of the Ir anomaly within the Chicxulub impact structure and the recorded biotic response confirms the direct relationship between the impact event and the K-Pg mass extinction’. Whether that is accepted by those geoscientists with their eyes on the Deccan Trap hypothesis is not so certain …

What followed the K-Pg extinction event?

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A study of boron isotopes in the tests of foraminifera that lived deep in the oceans and near their surface just after the K-Pg boundary event has revealed that ocean water suddenly became more acidic (Henehan, M.J. and 13 others 2019. Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Online; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1905989116). Because the data came from marine sediment sequences exposed in Europe and North America  and from ocean-floor cores beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the acidification was global in scope. The sharp fall in pH, almost certainly due to massive release of sulphuric and carbonic acids from thick anhydrite  and limestone beds beneath the Chicxulub impact site was instrumental in the collapse of marine ecosystems. A rebound to higher, more alkaline pH values (overshooting those of the preceding Late Cretaceous) was equally rapid. That is ascribed to the post-extinction dearth of marine organisms that take up calcium in their shells so that dissolved Ca became more abundant. Within less than 100 ka of the Chicxulub impact ocean pH had returned to its pre-impact levels. Since Deccan flood-basalt volcanism was active until long after, Henehan et al. consider that its influence on ocean acidification was minimal and that The Chicxulub impact ‘was key in driving end-Cretaceous mass extinction’.

Records of marine fossils are both more abundant and continuous than are those of land-based organisms. That animal extinctions on the continents were dramatic has been clear for over a century. Entire classes, notably the dinosaurs (except for birds), as well as orders, families, genera and species disappear from the fossil record. The event more than decimated plant taxa too. How and at what pace the vacated ecological niches were reoccupied during the evolutionary radiation among what became modern fauna and flora remain poorly understood. For the first million years of post-impact time fossils of terrestrial and freshwater organisms are very rare. Well-dated sedimentary sequences are patchily distributed, and fossils preserved in them as rare as proverbial hen’s teeth, apart from a few, better endowed strata separated by thick, unproductive sediments. A Lower Palaeocene site near Denver in Colorado, USA extends for 27 km. At first sight it does not impress palaeontologists, but it carries concretions that yield rich hauls of tiny vertebrate fossils. Dating using U-Pb dating of interleaved volcanic ash layers, stratigraphy based on normal and reversed polarity of remanent magnetism, and plant pollen variations. The 250 m thick sedimentary unit can be divided into 150 levels that represent the first million years flowing the Chicxulub impact (Lyson, T.R. and 15 others 2019. Paleogene mass extinction -Exceptional continental record of biotic recovery after the Cretaceous. Science, online first release; DOI: 10.1126/science.aay2268.

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Reconstruction of the 35 kg early Palaeocene mammal Taeniolabis (credit: Wikipedia)

The levels contain abundant remains of early Cenozoic mammals, particularly skulls that are vitally important in taxonomy and size estimation. During the last few hundred thousand years of the Cretaceous, mammals about the size of a modern racoon (~8 kg) were abundant. The oldest Palaeocene holds nothing bigger than a 600 g rat, and few of them. Then, remarkably, the numbers, diversity and mean body mass of mammals grow; raccoon-size back within 100 ka then, in a series of steps, beasts around 25, 35 and 45 kg emerged successively during the next 600 ka. Clearly, the local food chain had to support this growth in size as well as numbers. Pollen records reveal a terrain first dominated by ferns – not especially nutritious – then after 200 ka by palms and finally legumes (pulses) appear. The diversification of animals and plants changed in lockstep. Studies of fossil-leaf shapes (toothed = cooler; smooth = warmer) indicated a similarly triple-stepwise amelioration in climate from cool, post-impact to hot by 65 Ma ago. This climatic warming may have been connected to successive pulses of Deccan volcanism that drove up atmospheric CO2 levels. Geologically, that is pretty quick. In the context of a possible, equally rapid mass extinction as a result of anthropogenic factors, such a pace of recovery is hardly reassuring…

Last day of the dinosaurs

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As they say, ‘everyone knows’ that the dinosaurs were snuffed out, except, of course, for those that had evolved to become birds and somehow survived. When it happened is known quite precisely – at the end of the Cretaceous (66.043 ± 0.011 Ma) – and there were two possible causal mechanisms: emissions from the Deccan Trap flood basalts and/or the Chicxulub impact crater. But what was the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary event actually like? Many have speculated, but now there is evidence.

In 2016 a deep-sea drilling rig extracted rock core to a depth of 1.35 km beneath the sea floor off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, slightly off the centre of the circular Chicxulub structure (see K-T (K-Pg) boundary impact probed, November 2016). This venture was organised and administered jointly by the International Ocean Discovery Program IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) as Mission Specific Platform Expedition no. 364. Results from the analysis of the cored rock sequence have been generating pulses of excitement among palaeontologists, petrologists and planetary scientist on a regular basis. The science has been relatively slow to emerge in peer-reviewed print. Appetites have been whetted and the first substantial paper is about the bottom 130 metres of the core (Gulick, S.P.S. and 29 others 2019. The first day of the Cenozoic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 9 September 2019; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1909479116). It might seem as though the publication schedule has been stage managed to begin with, literally, the ‘bang’ itself.

The deepest 20 m thick layer is mainly silicate glass. It was formed in the seconds after the 12 km-wide impactor arrived to smash through the water and sea-floor sediments of the early Caribbean Sea, at speed of around 20 Km s-1. It vaporised water and rock as well as shoving aside the surrounding sea and blasting debris skyward and outward. In an instant a new hole in the crust was filled with molten rock. The overlying rock is a veritable apple-crumble of shattered debris mixed with and held together by glass, and probably formed as water flowed into the crater to result in explosive reaction with the molten crystalline crust beneath. The fragments lessen in size up the core, probably reflecting ejected material mixed in the displaced seawater. Impact specialists have estimated that this impactite layer formed in little more than ten minutes after collision. The glass-laden breccia is abruptly capped by bedded sediments, considered to have been delivered by the backwash of a huge, initial tsunami. In them are soils and masses of charcoal, from the surrounding land areas, scorched and burnt by the projectile’s entry flash, inundated by the tsunami and then dragged out to sea as it receded. These are the products of the hours following the impact as successive tsunamis swashed to and fro across the proto-Caribbean Basin; hence ‘The first day of the Cenozoic’, of Gulick et al.’s title.

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Artist’s impression of the Chicxulub impact (Credit: Barcroft Productions for the BBC)

Other cores drilled beyond the scope of the Chicxulub crater during offshore oil exploration show a sequence of limestones with thick beds of gypsum (CaSO4.2H2O). Yet the crater debris itself contains no trace of this mineral. Around 325 Gt of sulfur, almost certainly in the form of SO2, entered the atmosphere on that first day, adding to the dust. Ending up in the stratosphere as aerosols it would have diffused solar radiation away from the surface, resulting in an estimated 25°C global cooling that lasted 25 years. The sulfur oxides in the lower atmosphere ended up in acid rain that eventually acidified the upper ocean to devastate shallow-marine life.

See also: Amos, J. 2019. The day the dinosaurs’ world fell apart. (BBC News 10 September 2019); Rocks at asteroid impact site record first day of dinosaur extinction (Phys.org); Wei-Haas, M. 2019. Last day of the dinosaurs’ reign captured in stunning detail.  National Geographic, 9 September 2019.

Better dating of Deccan Traps, and the K-Pg event

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Predictably, the dialogue between the supporters of the Deccan Trap flood basalts and the Chicxulub impact as triggers that were responsible for the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era (the K-Pg event) continues. A recent issue of Science contains two new approaches focussing on the timing of flood basalt eruptions in western India relative to the age of the Chicxulub impact. One is based on dating the lavas using zircon U-Pb geochronology (Schoene, B. et al. 2019. U-Pb constraints on pulsed eruption of the Deccan Traps across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Science, v. 363, p. 862-866; DOI: 10.1126/science.aau2422), the other using 40Ar/39Ar dating of plagioclase feldspars (Sprain, C.G. et al. 2019. The eruptive tempo of Deccan volcanism in relation to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Science, v. 363, p. 866-870; DOI: 10.1126/science.aav1446). Both studies were initiated for the same reason: previous dating of the sequence of flows in the Deccan Traps was limited by inadequate sampling of the flow sequence and/or high analytical uncertainties. All that could be said with confidence was that the outpouring of more than a million cubic kilometres of plume-related basaltic magma lasted around a million years (65.5 to 66.5 Ma) that encompassed the sudden extinction event and the possibly implicated Chicxulub impact. The age of the impact, as recorded by its iridium-rich ejecta found in sediments of the Denver Basin in Colorado, has been estimated from zircon U-Pb data at 66.016 ± 0.050 Ma; i.e. with a precision of around 50 thousand years.

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The Deccan Traps in the Western Ghats of India (Credit: Wikipedia)

Because basalts rarely contain sufficient zircons to estimate a U-Pb age of their eruption, Blair Schoene and colleagues collected them from palaeosols or boles that commonly occur between flows and sometimes incorporate volcanic ash. Their data cover 23 boles and a single zircon-bearing basalt. Sprain et al. obtained 40Ar/39Ar ages from 19 flows, which they used to supplement 5 ages obtained by their team in previous studies that used the same analytical methods and 4 palaeosol ages from an earlier paper by Schoene’s group.

The zircon U-Pb data from palaeosols, combined with estimates of magma volumes that contributed to the lava sequence between each dated stratigraphic level, provide a record of the varying rates at which lavas accumulated. The results suggest four distinct periods of high-volume eruption separated by long. periods of relative quiescence. The second such pulse precedes the K-Pg event by up to 100 ka, the extinction and impact occurring in a period of quiescence. A few tens of thousand years after the event Deccan magmatism rose to its maximum intensity. Schoene’s group consider that this supports the notion that both magmatism and bolide impact drove environmental deterioration that culminated in mass extinction.

The Ar-Ar data derived from the basalt flows themselves, seem to tell a significantly different story. A plot of basalt accumulation, similarly derived from dating and stratigraphy, shows little if any sign of major magmatic pulses and periods of quiescence. Instead, Courtney Sprain’s team distinguish an average eruption rate of around 0.4 km3 per year before the K-Pg event and 0.6 km3 per year following it. Yet they observe from climate proxy data that there seems to have been only minor climatic change (about 2 to 3 °C warming) during the period around and after the K-Pg event when some 75% of the lavas flooded out. Yet during the pre-extinction period of slower effusion global temperature rose by 4°C then fell back to pre-eruption levels immediately before the K-Pg event. This odd mismatch between magma production and climate, based on their data, prompts Sprain et al. to speculate on possible shifts in the emission of climate-changing gases during the period Deccan volcanism: warming by carbon dioxide – either from the magma or older carbon-rich sediments heated by it; cooling induced by stratospheric sulfate aerosols formed by volcanogenic SO2 emissions. That would imply a complex scenario of changes in the composition of gas emissions of either type. They suggest that one conceivable trigger for the post-extinction climate shift may have been exhaustion of the magma source’s sulfur-rich volatile content before the Chicxulub impact added enough energy to the Earth system to generate the massive extrusions that followed it. But their view peters out in a demand for ‘better understanding of [the Deccan Traps’] volatile release’.

A curious case of empiricism seeming to resolve the K-Pg conundrum, on the one hand, yet pushing the resolution further off, on the other …

Read more on Palaeobiology and Magmatism

The winter of dinosaurs’ discontent

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Under the auspices of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), during April and May 2016 a large team of scientists and engineers sank a 1.3 km deep drill hole into the offshore, central part of the Chicxulub impact crater, which coincided with the K-Pg mass extinction event. Over the last year work has been underway to analyse the core samples aimed at investigating every aspect of the impact and its effects. Most of the data is yet to emerge, but the team has published the results of advanced modelling of the amount of climate-affecting gases and dusts that may have been ejected (Artemieva, N. et al. 2017. Quantifying the release of climate-active gases by large meteorite imp-acts with a case study of Chicxulub. Geophysical Research Letters, v. 44; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL074879).  . From petroleum exploration in the Gulf of Mexico the impact site is known to have been underlain by about 2.5 to 3.5 km of Mesozoic sediments that include substantial amounts of limestones and evaporitic anhydrite (CaSO4) – thicknesses of each are of the order of a kilometre. The impact would inevitably have yielded huge volumes of carbon- and sulfur dioxide gases, as well as water vapour plus solid and molten ejecta. The first, of course, is a critical greenhouse gas, whereas SO2 would form sulfuric acid aerosols if it entered the stratosphere. They are known to block incoming solar radiation. So both warming and cooling influences would have been initiated by the impact. Dust-sized ejecta that lingered in the atmosphere would also have had climatic cooling effects. The questions that the study aimed to answer concerns the relative masses of each gas that would have reached more than 25 km above the Earth to have long-term, global climatic effects and whether the dominant effect on climate was warming or cooling. Both gases would have added the environmental effects of making seawater more acid.

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3-D simulation of the Chicxulub crater based on gravity data (credit: Wikipedia)

Such estimates depend on a large number of factors beyond the potential mass of carbonate and sulfate source rocks. For instance: how big the asteroid was; how fast it was travelling and the angle at which it struck the Earth’s surface determine the kinetic energy involved and the impact mechanism. How that energy was distributed between atmosphere, seawater and the sedimentary sequence, together with the pressure-temperature conditions for the dissociation of calcite and anhydrite all need to be accounted for by modelling. Moreover, the computation itself becomes extremely long beyond estimates for the first second or so of the impact. Earlier estimates had been limited by computer speeds to only the first few seconds of the impact and could not allow for other than vertical impacts. The new study, by supercomputers and improved algorithms, used a likely 60° angle of impact, new data on mineral decomposition and simulated the first 15 to 30 seconds. The results suggested that 325 ± 130 Gt of sulfur and 425 ± 160 Gt CO2 were ejected, compared with earlier estimates of 40-560 Gt of sulfur and 350-3,500 Gt of CO2.  The greater proportion of sulfur release to the stratosphere pushes the model decisively towards global cooling, probably over a lengthy period – perhaps centuries. Taking dusts into account implies that visible sunlight would also have been blocked, devastating the photosynthetic base of the global food chain, in the sunlit parts of oceans as well as on land.

But we have to remember that these are the results of a theoretical model. In the same manner as this study has thrown earlier modeling into doubt, more data – and there will be a great many from the Chicxulub drill core itself – and more sophisticated computations may change the story significantly. Also, the other candidate for the mass extinction event, the flood basalt volcanism of the Deccan Traps, and its geochemical effects on the climate have yet to be factored in. The next few lines of Shakespeare’s soliloquy for  Richard III may well emerge from future work

… Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried …

See also: BBC News comment on 31 October 201