IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v415y2002i6870d10.1038_415386a.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

CO2 and the end-Triassic mass extinction

Author

Listed:
  • David Beerling

    (University of Sheffield)

Abstract

The end of the Triassic period was marked by one of the largest and most enigmatic mass-extinction events in Earth's history1 and, with few reliable marine geochemical records, terrestrial sediments offer an important means of deciphering environmental changes at this time. Tanner et al.2 describe an isotopic study of Mesozoic fossil soils which suggests that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (pCO2) across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary was relatively constant (within 250 p.p.m.v.), but this is inconsistent with high-resolution evidence from the stomatal characters of fossil leaves3. Here I show that the temporal resolution of the fossil-soil samples may have been inadequate for detecting a transient rise in pCO2. I also show that the fossil-soil data are consistent with a large increase in pCO2 across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary when variations in the stable carbon isotope (denoted as δ13C) in terrestrial plant leaves are taken into account. These factors suggest that the linkage between pCO2, global warming and the end-Triassic mass extinction remains intact.

Suggested Citation

  • David Beerling, 2002. "CO2 and the end-Triassic mass extinction," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6870), pages 386-387, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:415:y:2002:i:6870:d:10.1038_415386a
    DOI: 10.1038/415386a
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/415386a
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/415386a?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Mark T. & Protano, Gaetano & Ulgiati, Sergio, 2011. "Assessing geobiosphere work of generating global reserves of coal, crude oil, and natural gas," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(3), pages 879-887.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:415:y:2002:i:6870:d:10.1038_415386a. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.