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Science 14 February 1986:
Vol. 231. no. 4739, pp. 714 - 717
DOI: 10.1126/science.231.4739.714
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Articles

Palynological and Iridium Anomalies at Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, South-Central Saskatchewan

D. J. NICHOLS 1, D. M. JARZEN 2, C. J. ORTH 3, and P. Q. OLIVER 3

1 U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO 80225.
2 National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0M8.
3 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545.

The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in south-central Saskatchewan is marked by coincident anomalies in abundance of iridium and fern spores at the extinction level of a suite of Cretaceous pollen taxa. Evidence of disruption of the terrestrial flora includes the fern-spore abundance anomaly and local extinction of as much as 30 percent of angiosperm species. The reorganized earliest Tertiary flora is made up largely of surviving species that assumed new roles of dominance. Persistence of climatically sensitive taxa across the boundary indicates that if paleoclimate was altered by the terminal Cretaceous event, it returned quickly to the pre-event condition.

Submitted on June 3, 1985
Accepted on November 1, 1985


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