An extremely brief end Ordovician mass extinction linked to abrupt onset of glaciation

Ling, Ming-Xing; Zhan, Ren-Bin; Wang, Guang-Xu; Wang, Yi; Amelin, Yuri; Tang, Peng; Liu, Jian-Bo; Jin, Jisuo; Huang, Bing; Wu, Rong-Chang; Xue, Shuo; Fu, Bin; Bennett, Vickie C.; Wei, Xin; Luan, Xiao-Cong; Finnegan, Seth; Harper, David A.T.; Rong, Jia-Yu

doi:10.1016/j.sesci.2019.11.001

An extremely brief end Ordovician mass extinction linked to abrupt onset of glaciation

Ling, Ming-Xing; Zhan, Ren-Bin; Wang, Guang-Xu; Wang, Yi; Amelin, Yuri; Tang, Peng; Liu, Jian-Bo; Jin, Jisuo; Huang, Bing; Wu, Rong-Chang; Xue, Shuo; Fu, Bin; Bennett, Vickie C.; Wei, Xin; Luan, Xiao-Cong; Finnegan, Seth; Harper, David A.T.; Rong, Jia-Yu

Authors

Ming-Xing Ling

Ren-Bin Zhan

Guang-Xu Wang

Yi Wang

Yuri Amelin

Peng Tang

Jian-Bo Liu

Jisuo Jin

Bing Huang

Rong-Chang Wu

Shuo Xue

Bin Fu

Vickie C. Bennett

Xin Wei

Xiao-Cong Luan

Seth Finnegan

Professor David Harper david.harper@durham.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor

Jia-Yu Rong

Abstract

The end Ordovician mass extinction (EOME) was the second most severe biotic crisis in Phanerozoic, and has been widely linked to a major glaciation. However, robust geochronology of this interval is still lacking. Here we present four successive high-precision zircon U–Pb dates by isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry (ID-TIMS) for biostratigraphically well-constrained K-bentonites of a continuous Ordovician-Silurian boundary section at Wanhe, SW China. They include 444.65 ± 0.22 Ma (middle Dicellograptus complexus Biozone), 444.06 ± 0.20 Ma (lower Paraorthograptus pacificus Biozone), 443.81 ± 0.24 Ma (upper Tangyagraptus typicus Subzone), and 442.99 ± 0.17 Ma (upper Metabolograptus extraordinarius Biozone). Calculations based on sedimentation rates suggest a duration of 0.47 ± 0.34 Ma for the Hirnantian Stage, which is much shorter than previously thought (1.4 ± 2.05 Ma in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart ver. 2019/05). The new data also constrain the Hirnantian glacial maximum to ∼0.2 Ma, supporting that its brevity and intensity probably triggered the EOME.

Citation

Ling, M., Zhan, R., Wang, G., Wang, Y., Amelin, Y., Tang, P., …Rong, J. (2019). An extremely brief end Ordovician mass extinction linked to abrupt onset of glaciation. Solid earth sciences, 4(4), 190-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sesci.2019.11.001

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 10, 2019
Online Publication Date	Dec 9, 2019
Publication Date	Dec 31, 2019
Deposit Date	Dec 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Jan 9, 2020
Journal	Solid Earth Sciences.
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	4
Issue	4
Pages	190-198
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sesci.2019.11.001

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Copyright © 2019, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CCBY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).