Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event

Robert A DePalma; Anton A Oleinik; Loren P Gurche; David A Burnham; Jeremy J Klingler; Curtis J McKinney; Frederick P Cichocki; Peter L Larson; Victoria M Egerton; Roy A Wogelius; Nicholas P Edwards; Uwe Bergmann; Phillip L Manning

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-03232-9

Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event

Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 8;11(1):23704. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03232-9.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. [email protected].
² Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA. [email protected].
³ Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA.
⁴ Biodiversity Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA.
⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Weatherford, OK, 73096, USA.
⁶ Department of Geology, Miami-Dade College, Miami, FL, 33132, USA.
⁷ Adjunct Curator of Vertebrates, Maine State Museum, Augusta, ME, 04330, USA.
⁸ Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Hill City, SD, 57745, USA.
⁹ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.
¹⁰ Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin- Madison, 2320 Chamberlin Hall, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, WI, USA.
¹² Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. [email protected].

Abstract

The end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact triggered Earth's last mass-extinction, extinguishing ~ 75% of species diversity and facilitating a global ecological shift to mammal-dominated biomes. Temporal details of the impact event on a fine scale (hour-to-day), important to understanding the early trajectory of mass-extinction, have largely eluded previous studies. This study employs histological and histo-isotopic analyses of fossil fish that were coeval with a unique impact-triggered mass-death assemblage from the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) boundary in North Dakota (USA). Patterns of growth history, including periodicity of ẟ¹⁸O and ẟ¹³C and growth band morphology, plus corroborating data from fish ontogeny and seasonal insect behavior, reveal that the impact occurred during boreal Spring/Summer, shortly after the spawning season for fish and most continental taxa. The severity and taxonomic symmetry of response to global natural hazards are influenced by the season during which they occur, suggesting that post-impact perturbations could have exerted a selective force that was exacerbated by seasonal timing. Data from this study can also provide vital hindsight into patterns of extant biotic response to global-scale hazards that are relevant to both current and future biomes.