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Land plant evidence compatible with gradual, not catastrophic, change at the end of the Cretaceous

Nature volume 292, pages 529–531 (1981)Cite this article

Abstract

Field study of the fossil and sedimentary record across the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) boundary in Wyoming and Montana has been combined here with a reassessment of the published record of terrestrial palynomorphs to test recent hypotheses that a universal biotic catastrophe caused by an asteroid1–3, cometary impact4 or a supernova5 terminated the Cretaceous. Evidence from land plants is particularly critical because plants form the base of the terrestrial food chain. Thus, massive disruptions of the Earth's vegetation by the postulated effects of a cosmic disaster (blocking of solar radiation for several years by a dust cloud1, severe atmospheric heating1,4,6,7 or ionizing radiation5) would have an amplified effect on the land fauna. However, I report here that the geographically uneven and generally moderate levels of extinction and diversity change in the land flora, together with the non-synchroneity of plant and dinosaur extinctions, contradict hypotheses that a catastrophe caused terrestrial extinctions.

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  1. Division of Paleobotany, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20560, USA

    Leo J. Hickey

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Hickey, L. Land plant evidence compatible with gradual, not catastrophic, change at the end of the Cretaceous. Nature 292, 529–531 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/292529a0

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