Abstract
The Cretaceous/Palaeogene mass extinction eradicated 76% of species on Earth 1,2. It was caused by the impact of an asteroid 3,4 on the Yucatán carbonate platform in the southern Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago 5, forming the Chicxulub impact crater 6,7. 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 regions 8-11, 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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 288-292 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 558 |
| Issue number | 7709 |
| Early online date | 30 May 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Jun 2018 |
Funding
Acknowledgements This research used samples and data provided by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). IODP Expedition 364 was jointly funded by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) and International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP), with contributions and logistical support from the Yucatán State Government and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). We thank T. Cayton for assistance with crushing and washing samples; S. Dameron, R. Moura de Mello and M. Leckie for helpful discussions on benthic foraminifer taxonomy; J. Maner for assistance with the UT ESEM laboratory and R. Martindale for assistance with petrographic microscope imaging. We are particularly grateful for assistance of the staff of the IODP Core Repository in Bremen, Germany for their assistance taking these samples and running shipboard analyses. The authors acknowledge Post-Expedition Awards from the US Science Support Program for C.M.L. and T.J.B., NSF OCE 1737351, and NASA NNX16AJ60G. Funding for F.J.R.-T. was provided by Project CGL2015-66835-P (Secretaría de Estado de I+D+I, Spain), and Scientific Excellence Unit UCE-2016-05 (Universidad de Granada).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| European Consortium for Ocean Research | |
| National Science Foundation | 1737087, OCE 1737351, 1737199, 1624895, 1736951 |
| Directorate for Geosciences | 1737351 |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration | NNX16AJ60G |
| Natural Environment Research Council | NE/P005217/1, NE/P006736/1, bgs05019 |
| Japan Society for the Promotion of Science | 17K14409 |
| Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México | |
| Universidad de Granada |
