He, T orcid.org/0000-0001-8975-8667, Dal Corso, J, Newton, RJ orcid.org/0000-0003-0144-6867 et al. (10 more authors) (2020) An enormous sulfur isotope excursion indicates marine anoxia during the end-Triassic mass extinction. Science Advances, 6 (37). eabb6704. ISSN 2375-2548
Abstract
The role of ocean anoxia as a cause of the end-Triassic marine mass extinction is widely debated. Here, we present carbonate-associated sulfate δ³⁴S data from sections spanning the Late Triassic–Early Jurassic transition, which document synchronous large positive excursions on a global scale occurring in ~50 thousand years. Biogeochemical modeling demonstrates that this S isotope perturbation is best explained by a fivefold increase in global pyrite burial, consistent with large-scale development of marine anoxia on the Panthalassa margin and northwest European shelf. This pyrite burial event coincides with the loss of Triassic taxa seen in the studied sections. Modeling results also indicate that the pre-event ocean sulfate concentration was low (<1 millimolar), a common feature of many Phanerozoic deoxygenation events. We propose that sulfate scarcity preconditions oceans for the development of anoxia during rapid warming events by increasing the benthic methane flux and the resulting bottom-water oxygen demand.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/N018559/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P013724/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S009663/1 Leverhulme Trust ECF-2015-044 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jul 2020 14:05 |
Last Modified: | 30 Sep 2020 15:45 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
Identification Number: | 10.1126/sciadv.abb6704 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:163345 |