Dataset Information

Abundance not linked to survival across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: patterns in North American bivalves.

ABSTRACT: Ecological studies suggest that rare taxa are more likely to go extinct than abundant ones, but the influence of abundance on survivorship in the fossil record has received little attention. An analysis of Late Maastrichtian bivalve subgenera from the North American Coastal Plain found no evidence that survivorship is tied to abundance across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (65 million years ago), regardless of abundance metric or spatial scale examined. The fact that abundance does not promote survivorship in end-Cretaceous bivalves suggests that the factors influencing survivorship during mass extinctions in the fossil record may differ from those operating during intervals of background extinction.

SUBMITTER: Lockwood R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC151366 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Abundance not linked to survival across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: patterns in North American bivalves.

Lockwood Rowan R

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20030224 5

Ecological studies suggest that rare taxa are more likely to go extinct than abundant ones, but the influence of abundance on survivorship in the fossil record has received little attention. An analysis of Late Maastrichtian bivalve subgenera from the North American Coastal Plain found no evidence that survivorship is tied to abundance across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (65 million years ago), regardless of abundance metric or spatial scale examined. The fact that abundance does not promo ...[more]

PMID: 12601147

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Project description:The Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction eradicated 76% of species on Earth1,2. It was caused by the impact of an asteroid3,4 on the Yucatán carbonate platform in the southern Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago 5 , forming the Chicxulub impact crater6,7. After the mass extinction, the recovery of the global marine ecosystem-measured as primary productivity-was geographically heterogeneous 8 ; export production in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic-western Tethys was slower than in most other regions8-11, taking 300 thousand years (kyr) to return to levels similar to those of the Late Cretaceous period. Delayed recovery of marine productivity closer to the crater implies an impact-related environmental control, such as toxic metal poisoning 12 , on recovery times. If no such geographic pattern exists, the best explanation for the observed heterogeneity is a combination of ecological factors-trophic interactions 13 , species incumbency and competitive exclusion by opportunists 14 -and 'chance'8,15,16. The question of whether the post-impact recovery of marine productivity was delayed closer to the crater has a bearing on the predictability of future patterns of recovery in anthropogenically perturbed ecosystems. If there is a relationship between the distance from the impact and the recovery of marine productivity, we would expect recovery rates to be slowest in the crater itself. Here we present a record of foraminifera, calcareous nannoplankton, trace fossils and elemental abundance data from within the Chicxulub crater, dated to approximately the first 200 kyr of the Palaeocene. We show that life reappeared in the basin just years after the impact and a high-productivity ecosystem was established within 30 kyr, which indicates that proximity to the impact did not delay recovery and that there was therefore no impact-related environmental control on recovery. Ecological processes probably controlled the recovery of productivity after the Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction and are therefore likely to be important for the response of the ocean ecosystem to other rapid extinction events.

Dataset Information

Abundance not linked to survival across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: patterns in North American bivalves.

Publications

Abundance not linked to survival across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: patterns in North American bivalves.

Similar Datasets

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