Repeated pulses of volcanism drove the end-Permian terrestrial crisis in northwest China

Abstract

The Permo-Triassic mass extinction was linked to catastrophic environmental changes and large igneous province (LIP) volcanism. In addition to the widespread marine losses, the Permo–Triassic event was the most severe terrestrial ecological crisis in Earth’s history and the only known mass extinction among insects, but the cause of extinction on land remains unclear. In this study, high-resolution Hg concentration records and multiple-archive S-isotope analyses of sediments from the Junggar Basin (China) provide evidence of repeated pulses of volcanic-S (acid rain) and increased Hg loading culminating in a crisis of terrestrial biota in the Junggar Basin coeval with the interval of LIP emplacement. Minor S-isotope analyses are, however, inconsistent with total ozone layer collapse. Our data suggest that LIP volcanism repeatedly stressed end-Permian terrestrial environments in the ~300 kyr preceding the marine extinction locally via S-driven acidification and deposition of Hg, and globally via pulsed addition of CO₂.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Dal Corso, J. Newton, R. J. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0144-6867 Zerkle, A. L. Chu, D. Song, H. Song, H. Li, T. Tong, J. Di Rocco, T. Claire, M. W. Mather, T. A. He, T. Gallagher, T. Shu, W. Wu, Y. Bottrell, S. H. Metcalfe, I. Cope, H. Novak, M. Jamieson, R. Wignall, P. B.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 2 September 2024 Published (online): 2 September 2024 Accepted: 12 August 2024
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)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/C000854/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P013724/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	28 Aug 2024 09:51
Last Modified:	16 Sep 2024 12:50
Published Version:	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51671-5
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-024-51671-5
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:216459

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Repeated pulses of volcanism drove the end-Permian terrestrial crisis in northwest China

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