Correlation of the largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and extinction events over the past 250 Myr

Michael R. Rampino; Ken Caldeira

doi:10.1016/j.gsf.2017.03.002

Correlation of the largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and extinction events over the past 250 Myr

Michael R. Rampino, Ken Caldeira

Biology and Genomics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The six largest known impact craters of the last 250 Myr (≥70 km in diameter), which are capable of causing significant environmental damage, coincide with four times of recognized extinction events at 36 (with 2 craters), 66, and 145 Myr ago, and possibly with two provisional extinction events at 168 and 215 Myr ago. These impact cratering events are accompanied by layers in the geologic record interpreted as impact ejecta. Chance occurrences of impacts and extinctions can be rejected at confidence levels of 99.96% (for 4 impact/extinctions) to 99.99% (for 6 impact/extinctions). These results argue that several extinction events over the last 250 Myr may be related to the effects of large-body impacts.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1241-1245
Number of pages	5
Journal	Geoscience Frontiers
Volume	8
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2017.03.002
State	Published - Nov 2017

Keywords

Ejecta layers
Extinctions
Impact craters

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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10.1016/j.gsf.2017.03.002

Cite this

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title = "Correlation of the largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and extinction events over the past 250 Myr",

abstract = "The six largest known impact craters of the last 250 Myr (≥70 km in diameter), which are capable of causing significant environmental damage, coincide with four times of recognized extinction events at 36 (with 2 craters), 66, and 145 Myr ago, and possibly with two provisional extinction events at 168 and 215 Myr ago. These impact cratering events are accompanied by layers in the geologic record interpreted as impact ejecta. Chance occurrences of impacts and extinctions can be rejected at confidence levels of 99.96% (for 4 impact/extinctions) to 99.99% (for 6 impact/extinctions). These results argue that several extinction events over the last 250 Myr may be related to the effects of large-body impacts.",

keywords = "Ejecta layers, Extinctions, Impact craters",

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note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University",

year = "2017",

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doi = "10.1016/j.gsf.2017.03.002",

language = "English (US)",

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T1 - Correlation of the largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and extinction events over the past 250 Myr

AU - Rampino, Michael R.

AU - Caldeira, Ken

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N2 - The six largest known impact craters of the last 250 Myr (≥70 km in diameter), which are capable of causing significant environmental damage, coincide with four times of recognized extinction events at 36 (with 2 craters), 66, and 145 Myr ago, and possibly with two provisional extinction events at 168 and 215 Myr ago. These impact cratering events are accompanied by layers in the geologic record interpreted as impact ejecta. Chance occurrences of impacts and extinctions can be rejected at confidence levels of 99.96% (for 4 impact/extinctions) to 99.99% (for 6 impact/extinctions). These results argue that several extinction events over the last 250 Myr may be related to the effects of large-body impacts.

AB - The six largest known impact craters of the last 250 Myr (≥70 km in diameter), which are capable of causing significant environmental damage, coincide with four times of recognized extinction events at 36 (with 2 craters), 66, and 145 Myr ago, and possibly with two provisional extinction events at 168 and 215 Myr ago. These impact cratering events are accompanied by layers in the geologic record interpreted as impact ejecta. Chance occurrences of impacts and extinctions can be rejected at confidence levels of 99.96% (for 4 impact/extinctions) to 99.99% (for 6 impact/extinctions). These results argue that several extinction events over the last 250 Myr may be related to the effects of large-body impacts.

KW - Ejecta layers

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KW - Impact craters

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Correlation of the largest craters, stratigraphic impact signatures, and extinction events over the past 250 Myr

Abstract

Keywords

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