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An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body

Schmitz, Birger; Farley, Kenneth A.; Goderis, Steven; Heck, Philipp R.; Bergström, Stig M.; Boschi, Samuele; Claeys, Philippe; Debaille, Vinciane; Dronov, Andrei; van Ginneken, Matthias; Harper, David A.T.; Iqbal, Faisal; Friberg, Johan; Liao, Shiyong; Martin, Ellinor; Meier, Matthias M.M.; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard; Soens, Bastien; Wieler, Rainer; Terfelt, Fredrik

An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body Thumbnail


Authors

Birger Schmitz

Kenneth A. Farley

Steven Goderis

Philipp R. Heck

Stig M. Bergström

Samuele Boschi

Philippe Claeys

Vinciane Debaille

Andrei Dronov

Matthias van Ginneken

Faisal Iqbal

Johan Friberg

Shiyong Liao

Ellinor Martin

Matthias M.M. Meier

Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink

Bastien Soens

Rainer Wieler

Fredrik Terfelt



Abstract

The breakup of the L-chondrite parent body in the asteroid belt 466 million years (Ma) ago still delivers almost a third of all meteorites falling on Earth. Our new extraterrestrial chromite and 3He data for Ordovician sediments show that the breakup took place just at the onset of a major, eustatic sea level fall previously attributed to an Ordovician ice age. Shortly after the breakup, the flux to Earth of the most fine-grained, extraterrestrial material increased by three to four orders of magnitude. In the present stratosphere, extraterrestrial dust represents 1% of all the dust and has no climatic significance. Extraordinary amounts of dust in the entire inner solar system during >2 Ma following the L-chondrite breakup cooled Earth and triggered Ordovician icehouse conditions, sea level fall, and major faunal turnovers related to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.

Citation

Schmitz, B., Farley, K. A., Goderis, S., Heck, P. R., Bergström, S. M., Boschi, S., …Terfelt, F. (2019). An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body. Science Advances, 5(9), Article eaax4184. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax4184

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 21, 2019
Online Publication Date Sep 18, 2019
Publication Date Sep 18, 2019
Deposit Date Sep 20, 2019
Publicly Available Date Sep 20, 2019
Journal Science Advances
Electronic ISSN 2375-2548
Publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 5
Issue 9
Article Number eaax4184
DOI https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax4184

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