Mass Extinction

Woodleigh is a recently discovered impact structure with a diameter of 120 km, and thereby represents the third largest proven Phanerozoic impact structure known after Morocweng and Chicxulub. K-Ar isotopic studies of fine-grained authigenic illitic clay minerals (<2 μm), considered to be impact-induced hydrothermal alteration products, indicate a Late Devonian (359±4 Ma) age for the impact. Other evidence reported for Late Devonian extraterrestrial impacts include the strong iridium anomaly in the Canning Basin, Western Australia, and microtektites and elemental anomalies (including iridium) in South China. Given the large diameter of the Woodleigh impact structure and its relative proximity to iridium anomalies also of Late Devonian age in eastern Gondwana basins, environmental effects of the Woodleigh impact event are a likely contributor to a biotic crisis in the Late Devonian.

The vegetation of the northern Upper Rhine Graben (southwestern Germany) is reconstructed for the end of the Lateglacial and the Holocene by means of palynological analyses in combination with AMS14c dating. Analogous to adjacent lowland areas, the Younger Dryas climatic deterioration didnotresult in a complete deforestation of the area and open pine woodlands with locally birch stands and shrubs persisted. A subdivision of the Younger Dryas period, into a humid first phase, followed by a dry second phase was also reflected in our records. For the Holocene, the pollen diagrams show two regionally different vegetation developments, related to substrate and variations in annual precipitation: in the south the ‘classical’ succession of pine then hazel is followed by other deciduous trees, whereas in the northern part, pine kept its dominance far into the Subboreal.

Pareraukawa’s Te Ahukaramū identifies an externalised type of knowledge as mātauranga (Royal 2005). It is a shared knowledge, “‘ma’ and ‘tau’ … said to be attained when it is held or comes to rest within us” (Smith 2015, 51). Contrastingly, mātauranga Māori is “an indigenous body of knowledge that arises from a worldview based upon kinship relationships between people and the natural world” (Royal Society Te Apārangi 2017, para. 2). An inherited erudition, it “responds to the three great questions of life, namely: Who am I? What is this world that I exist in? What am I to do?” (Royal 2012, 35) Mātauranga Māori is a means for exploring life philosophically.

Extinction is the “irreversible condition of a species or other group of organisms having no living representatives in the wild, which follows the death of the last surviving individual of that species or group” (Hine and Martin 2015, para. 1). Mass extinctions are extinctions of the greatest magnitude, occurring “when many diverse groups of organisms become extinct over short periods of time” (Condie 2011, 250). In November 2017, 15,372 scientists declared the scientific consensus (Ripple et al. 2017). Mass extinction has occurred five times in the past. A sixth mass extinction has begun. Humans are the cause of the latest episode. However, “the oft-repeated claim that Earth’s biota is entering a sixth ‘mass extinction’ depends on clearly demonstrating current extinction rates are far above the ‘background’ rates” (Ceballos et al. 2015, 1).

An example of mātauranga is the method outlined by Ceballos et al. (2015) for calculating current extinction rates. An example of mātauranga Māori are the responses, which arise from that calculation. If we have evidence that our nonhuman kin (and, indeed, our own offspring) are being “deprive[d] of life or strength” (Lewis and Short 1891, 704), what is our responsibility?

This paper presents my replication study of Ceballos et al. (2015) using 2018 data. It considers the etymology of responsibility as an agential construct. Finally, it makes suggestions for a non-agential responsibility informed by, first, mātauranga Māori and, second, Levinasian ethics.

Non-avian dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, geologically coincident with the impact of a large bolide (comet or asteroid) during an interval of massive volcanic eruptions and changes in temperature and sea level. There has long been fervent debate about how these events affected dinosaurs. We review a wealth of new data accumulated over the past two decades, provide updated and novel analyses of long-term dinosaur diversity trends during the latest Cretaceous, and discuss an emerging consensus on the extinction’s tempo and causes. Little support exists for a global, long-term decline across non-avian dinosaur diversity prior to their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. However, restructuring of latest Cretaceous dinosaur faunas in North America led to reduced diversity of large-bodied herbivores, perhaps making communities more susceptible to cascading extinctions. The abruptness of the dinosaur extinction suggests a key role for the bolide

The human race faces many global to local challenges in the near future. Among these are massive biodiversity losses. The 2012 IUCN/SSC Red List reported evaluations of *56 % of all vertebrates. This included 97 % of amphibians, mammals, birds, cartilaginous fishes, and hagfishes. It also contained evaluations of *50 % of lampreys, *38 % of reptiles, and *29 % of bony fishes. A cursory examination of extinction magnitudes does not immediately reveal the severity of current biodiversity losses because the extinctions we see today have happened in such a short time compared to earlier events in the fossil record. So, we still must ask how current losses of species compare to losses in mass extinctions from the geological past. The most recent and best understood mass extinction is the Cretaceous terminal extinction which ends at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) border, 65 MYA. This event had massive losses of biodiversity (*17 % of families, [50 % of genera, and [70 % of species) and exterminated the dinosaurs. Extinction estimates for non-dinosaurian vertebrates at the K–Pg boundary range from 36 to 43 %. However, there remains much uncertainty regarding the completeness, preservation rates, and extinction magnitudes of the different classes of vertebrates. Fuzzy arithmetic was used to compare recent vertebrate extinction reported in the 2012 IUCN/SSC Red List with biodiversity losses at the end of K–Pg. Comparisons followed 16 different approaches to data compilation and 288 separate calculations. I tabulated the number of extant and extinct species (extinct ? extinct in the wild), extant island endemics, data deficient species, and so-called impaired species [species with IUCN/SSC Red List designations from vulnerable (VU) to critically endangered (CR)]. Species that went extinct since 1500 and since 1980 were tabulated. Vertebrate extinction moved forward 24–85 times faster since 1500 than during the Cretaceous mass extinction. The magnitude of extinction has exploded since 1980, with losses about 71–297 times larger than during the K–Pg event. If species identified by the IUCN/SSC as critically endangered through vulnerable, and those that are data deficient are assumed extinct by geological standards, then vertebrate extinction approaches 8900–18,500 times the magnitude during that mass extinction. These extreme values and the great speed with which vertebrate biodiversity is being decimated are comparable to the devastation of previous extinction events. If recent levels of extinction were to continue, the magnitude is sufficient to drive these groups extinct in less than a century.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary~ 65.5 million years ago marks one of the three largest mass extinctions in the past 500 million years. The extinction event coincided with a large asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, and occurred within the time of Deccan flood basalt volcanism in India. Here, we synthesize records of the global stratigraphy across this boundary to assess the proposed causes of the mass extinction. Notably, a single ejecta-rich deposit compositionally linked to the Chicxulub impact is globally distributed at the ...

We have recently compiled a database of the properties of 192 impact craters, which supercedes previous compilations. Using our database, the impact structures found in North America, Europe and Australia have been examined; these cratonic areas have been relatively stable for considerably long geological periods, and thus have been best preserved. It is confirmed that there is a close correlation between the geological epoch boundaries, the epochs of mass extinctions, and the ``timing&#39;&#39; of impacts. In addition, the terrestrial cumulative flux of objects &gt;20km is found to be 1.77×10-15km-2yr-1, over the last 120 Myr, which is much smaller than the published values in McEwen et al. (1997) and Shoemaker (1998) (5.6±2.8×10-15km-2yr-1). For terrestrial impact structures with D&gt;50 km, the apparent cumulative flux over the last 2450 Myr is ~50 times smaller than the corresponding value for the Moon. If we assume that the Earth and the Moon suffered the same level of bombardm...

The Upper Devonian Palliser Formation and its subsurface equivalent Wabamun Formation of western Canada comprise areally and volumetrically one of the largest epeiric carbonate platforms on Earth, covering some 600,000 km2 and reaching 600 m in thickness. Of Famennian age, these monotonous rocks formed in the aftermath of one of the great Paleozoic mass extinction events. Inboard of a ramp-like margin of gentle inclination (<0.5°), the platform shallowed imperceptibly eastward, eventually becoming locally evaporitic in interior areas. The platform is thus characterized by a series of broad facies belts reflecting its relative shallowness and enormous width. Limestones cropping out in the southern and central Rocky Mountains represent mainly the outer and middle parts of the platform. These regions never developed facies cyclicity and the platform remained submerged. The Upper Devonian Palliser Formation and its subsurface equivalent Wabamun Formation of western Canada comprise areally and volumetrically one of the largest epeiric carbonate platforms on Earth, covering some 600,000 km2 and reaching 600 m in thickness. Of Famennian age, these monotonous rocks formed in the aftermath of one of the great Paleozoic mass extinction events. Inboard of a ramp-like margin of gentle inclination (<0.5°), the platform shallowed imperceptibly eastward, eventually becoming locally evaporitic in interior areas. The platform is thus characterized by a series of broad facies belts reflecting its relative shallowness and enormous width. Limestones cropping out in the southern and central Rocky Mountains represent mainly the outer and middle parts of the platform. These regions never developed facies cyclicity and the platform remained submerged. Calcimudstones and peloidal wackestones overwhelmingly dominate with significant proportions of intraclasts, aggregates, dasycladalean calcareous algae, crinoid ossicles and minor amounts of brachiopods, gastropods, ostracodes and sponge spicules; bioturbation was ubiquitous and multi- generational. The shallow seafloor was flat and virtually featureless, with widespread meadows of algae and crinoids plus a few areas of low-relief stromatoporoidal patch reefs. In this storm-dominated system, the sediment surface of varying stiffness was swept and scoured frequently, leaving pack- to grainstones composed of rounded intraclasts and sediment-filled burrows. The abundance of algae and dominantly micritized aspect of crinoid ossicles suggest that the platform was mesotrophic, receiving elevated nutrient supply from the Ellesmerian orogen on the northern side of the craton.
Although superficially uniform and ‘layer-cake’ in aspect, subtle compositional changes show that the platform exhibits four, hitherto unrecognized, long-term transgressive– regressive sequences, culminating in the demise of carbonate sedimentation and burial by nearly craton-wide black shales. Eustatic sea level and, more importantly, subsidence rate fluctuated during these sequences, with the third sequence characterized by subaerial exposure of the proximal region. Thicknesses calibrated to conodont biozones indicate that the marginal ramp had the greatest accumulation rate, although without any dramatic alteration of paleotopography.  The ability of carbonate production to keep a balance with subsidence and eustasy over ~10 million years and hundreds of metres of strata yet not display in peritidal cycles is a characteristic shared by many other large platforms. It may reflect insufficient carbonate production rates, a higher energy regime, and off-platform sediment redeposition, coupled with stable mesotrophic conditions.

Astrological insights of planetary archetypes are statistically correlated to human history by Dr. Richard Tarnas in his book, Cosmos and Psyche, to reveal human predilections in the same way insurance underwriters use statistics to predict mortality correlations; They both use past human behavior to predict future behavioral outcomes. These correlated historical insights are used to understand the past as it aligns with planetary movement through space and time. The correlations are statistically significant: The archetypes of the planets align with history. The author compares her personal history with the zeitgeist of two historic periods, the 1960s and the time of the French Revolution to acknowledge the correlation of Tarnas’ analysis of the effect of planetary alignments with her own human behavior and experience.
"Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." ~ Albert Einstein

—It will not be extraterrestrial impacts, disease, or other extrinsic agents that will cause the extinction of Man, but rather the collapse of his artificial economy. We argue that there is no productive category of the economy beyond the Service Sector in which to shift the global work force. As the Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Service Sectors continue to shed workers in a bid to reduce costs, this inevitably feeds Unemployment. A global economic regime in which an ever decreasing pool of workers subsidizes an ever growing army of unemployed is axiomatically unsustainable and conduces to system breakdown. That fateful day, profit-minded agricultural corporations will have no further incentive to produce food or deliver it to the cities.

Because of their small size and vast abundance in various types of sedimentary rocks, microfossils have found a multitude of applications in geology, especially regarding biostratigraphy, correlations and paleoenvironmental analysis. Organic-walled microfossils such as pollen, spores, and various organic debris derived from terrestrial plants, are especially useful when studying terrestrial deposits. This chapter presents the many different groups of organic-walled microfossils, collectively called palynomorphs, and the different methods palynologists use to study and extract them from sediments and rocks. We present a biostratigraphic application, the use of the pollen and spore record across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, which has proven to be one of the most precise and reliable means for pinpointing this major transition within terrestrial deposits.

Preserving global biodiversity depends upon designating many more large terrestrial and marine areas as strictly protected areas. Yet recent calls for addressing biodiversity loss by setting aside more protected areas have been met with hostility from some social scientists and even some conservation biologists. The main objections against the so-called 'nature needs half' movement include the following. First, setting aside protected areas implies that some vulnerable human communities will be displaced to make space for wildlife. Second, separating humans from their environment ignores the fact that humans have always been part of the environments around them, and creates a false dichotomy between nature and culture. Third, conservationists are said to put the blame for biodiversity loss on all humanity, rather than on those who are doing most of the damage. Fourth, many social justice proponents argue that human population growth is not related to biodiversity loss or other sustainability challenges. This article critically addresses these four objections, exposing their robust anthropo-centric bias. Protected area critics reliably demand fairness for human beings at the expense of nonhuman beings, who they treat as morally inconsequential. But justice is not only about just us. Conservation properly understood implies a fair division of Earth's resources between human and nonhuman beings. Justice demands setting aside at least half Earth's lands and seas for nature, free from intensive economic activities.

The literature references of MayLib from the year 2000 to the year 2015 presented as a CSV file. This CSV file can be read by EXCEL, for example.

For more details see following publication, which can be read and downloaded below:

MAY A. (2015).- MayLib - a textfile-based bibliographic database for geosciences and a list of references on Devonian matters.- Carnets Géol., Madrid, vol. 15, nº 6, p. 59-62. Abstract: Scientists need to manage their own collections of bibliographic data as well as exchange these data easily with colleagues. One solution for this need is MayLib, a bibliographic database that runs on many different operating systems and does not require pre-installation of any software. MayLib is a very small, efficient and comprehensive JAVA program that handles references to publications in any Unicode-compatible language. It is user-friendly and not only contains the basic functions of a bibliographic database, but also has some advanced features. Using MayLib the author has been able to create a list of references, which contains 500 periodicals and 4206 literature references. Of these 4206 references 3191 deal with Devonian matters and 1594 references deal with corals. Key Words: Java, bibliographic database, Devonian, corals, fossils.

The literature references of MayLib from the year 1816 to the year 2000 presented as a CSV file. This CSV file can be read by EXCEL, for example.

For more details see following publication, which can be read and downloaded below:

MAY A. (2015).- MayLib - a textfile-based bibliographic database for geosciences and a list of references on Devonian matters.- Carnets Géol., Madrid, vol. 15, nº 6, p. 59-62. Abstract: Scientists need to manage their own collections of bibliographic data as well as exchange these data easily with colleagues. One solution for this need is MayLib, a bibliographic database that runs on many different operating systems and does not require pre-installation of any software. MayLib is a very small, efficient and comprehensive JAVA program that handles references to publications in any Unicode-compatible language. It is user-friendly and not only contains the basic functions of a bibliographic database, but also has some advanced features. Using MayLib the author has been able to create a list of references, which contains 500 periodicals and 4206 literature references. Of these 4206 references 3191 deal with Devonian matters and 1594 references deal with corals.

Key Words: Java, bibliographic database, Devonian, corals, fossils.

This diagram show the rise and fall of global temperatures during the last 540 million years.  Scotese (2016) describes how this curve was made.  It replaces the curve published in Scotese et al., (1999).

PETM= Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55.8 Ma), EEOC = Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (54 Ma – 46 Ma), MECO = Mid-Eocene Climatic Optimum(42 Ma), EOT = Eocene-Oligocene Transition (40 Ma – 33 Ma), MMCO=Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (15Ma – 13Ma), LGM = Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago), 2016 = Modern MAT, PAW = Post-Anthropogenic Warming .  White stars indicate rapid cooling episodes (Stoll-Schrag Events26) at 160Ma, 127Ma, 97Ma, 91Ma, 71Ma, and 65 Ma).  Black stars represent rapid warming episodes (Kidder-Worsley Events16) at (Present-day, 15Ma, 43Ma, 56Ma, 65Ma, 93Ma, 120Ma, 183Ma, 200Ma, 251Ma, 300Ma, 359Ma, 374Ma, 444Ma, 499Ma, 520Ma, and 542 Ma).

Please cite as:  Scotese, C.R., 2015.  Phanerozoic Temperature Curve, PALEOMAP Project, Evanston, IL.

To learn more about how this curve was produced see:
Scotese, C.R., 2016.  Some thoughts Global Climate Change: The Transition from Icehouse to Hothouse, in Scotese, C.R., Earth History: The Evolution of the Earth System as Revealed through Plate Tectonics, Paleogeography, Paleoclimate, and the Evolution of Life, PALEOMAP Project, (in preparation), Evanston, IL.

OMG - THIS  PROVES THAT THE EXTENT OF OUR COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESSES EXCEEDS THE CONFINES OF THIS MULTIVERSE

THEY CONFIRM THAT HUMANITY KILLS ITSELF OFF ENTIRELY AND THEN STARTS OVER, THAT CYCLE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE VIA THE COMING EVENT, WHICH WE CAN CAUSE VIA ORGONE BUBBLE TECHNOLOGY.

Modern debate regarding the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs was ignited by the publication of the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) asteroid impact theory and has seen 30 years of dispute over the position of the stratigraphically youngest in situ dinosaur. A zone devoid of dinosaur fossils reported from the last 3 m of the Upper Cretaceous, coined the ‘3 m gap’, has helped drive controversy. Here, we report the discovery of the stratigraphically youngest in situ dinosaur specimen: a ceratopsian brow horn found in a poorly rooted, silty, mudstone floodplain deposit located no more than 13 cm below the palynologically defined boundary. The K–T boundary is identified using three criteria: (i) decrease in Cretaceous palynomorphs without subsequent recovery, (ii) the existence of a ‘fern spike’, and (iii) correlation to a nearby stratigraphic section where primary extraterrestrial impact markers are present (e.g. iridium anomaly, spherules, shocked quartz). The in situ specimen demonstrates that a gap devoid of non-avian dinosaur fossils does not exist and is inconsistent with the hypothesis that non-avian dinosaurs were extinct prior to the K–T boundary impact event.