Rapid Resurgence of Marine Productivity After the Cretaceous-Paleogene Mass Extinction
Julio Sepúlveda,1,2,*,
Jens E. Wendler,3,
Roger E. Summons,4
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs1,2
The course of the biotic recovery after the impact-related disruption
of photosynthesis and mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene
boundary has been intensely debated. The resurgence of marine
primary production in the aftermath remains poorly constrained
because of the paucity of fossil records tracing primary producers
that lack skeletons. Here we present a high-resolution record
of geochemical variation in the remarkably thick Fiskeler (also
known as the Fish Clay) boundary layer at Kulstirenden, Denmark.
Converging evidence from the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen
and abundances of algal steranes and bacterial hopanes indicates
that algal primary productivity was strongly reduced for only
a brief period of possibly less than a century after the impact,
followed by a rapid resurgence of carbon fixation and ecological
reorganization.
2 International Graduate College–Proxies in Earth History (EUROPROX), University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany.
3 Research Group Geochronology–Basin Analysis, Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany.
4 Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Present address: Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, 45 Carleton Street E25-623, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Present address: Institute of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Burgweg 11, 07749 Jena, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: juliosep{at}mit.edu
