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Palaeobiology

Mass extinction probed

Nature volume 392, pages 17–19 (1998)Cite this article

At the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, a large meteorite or comet struck the Earth. Coupled, perhaps, with longer-term climatic changes, this led to a mass extinction — with the disappearance of 39-47% of fossilizable genera and perhaps 75% of species. What were the secondary causes that translated the bolide impact into a mass extinction? On page 69 of this issue1, Smith and Jeffery report their detailed study of the sea-urchin fossil record across the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary, and provide insights into the nature of these causes.

Smith and Jeffery probed the secondary causes of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction by searching a global database for biological and geographical correlates of sea-urchin survival and extinction across the K/T boundary. Distilling the required data from over 150 years of published studies is not straightforward. For example, fossils that belong to one species may have been assigned to several different species, especially by palaeontologists working in different geographical areas and in rocks of different ages. This will artificially inflate perceived levels of extinction. Furthermore, the intensity of the extinction may be overestimated if different species on either side of the extinction boundary are not recognized as belonging to the same evolutionary lineage. How best to correct for this type of error is not settled3.

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Figure 1: The mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Earth and Space Science, Molecular Biology Institute and Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095-1567, California, USA

    Charles R. Marshall

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  1. Charles R. Marshall
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Marshall, C. Mass extinction probed. Nature 392, 17–19 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/32039

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