ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
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- The Visual Umwelt of primates and Hippocampal Representations of Space.Hippocampus · 2026Review
- Genome architecture evolution in an invasive copepod species complex.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ocean freshening near the end of the Mesozoic.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Pulses of ocean acidification at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ecological restructuring of North Tethyan marine vertebrate communities triggered by the end-Cretaceous extinction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Record of Foraminifera test composition throughout the Phanerozoic.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Effect of a giant meteorite impact on Paleoarchean surface environments and life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Hot carbonates deep within the Chicxulub impact structure.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Recurring volcanic winters during the latest Cretaceous: Sulfur and fluorine budgets of Deccan Traps lavas.Science advances · 2023Article
- Continental flood basalts do not drive later Phanerozoic extinctions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Timing and causes of forest fire at the K-Pg boundary.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Reduced HProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Massive perturbations to atmospheric sulfur in the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Climate Change and Obesity.Hormone and metabolic research = Hormon- und Stoffwechselforschung = Hormones et metabolisme · 2021Review
- Ecosystem function after the K/Pg extinction: decoupling of marine carbon pump and diversity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Evolution of kaiA, a key circadian gene of cyanobacteria.Scientific reports · 2021Article
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14 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary coincides with the Chicxulub bolide impact and also falls within the broader time frame of Deccan trap emplacement. Critically, though, empirical evidence as to how either of these factors could have driven observed extinction patterns and carbon cycle perturbations is still lacking. Here, using boron isotopes in foraminifera, we document a geologically rapid surface-ocean pH drop following the Chicxulub impact, supporting impact-induced ocean acidification as a mechanism for ecological collapse in the marine realm. Subsequently, surface water pH rebounded sharply with the extinction of marine calcifiers and the associated imbalance in the global carbon cycle. Our reconstructed water-column pH gradients, combined with Earth system modeling, indicate that a partial ∼50% reduction in global marine primary productivity is sufficient to explain observed marine carbon isotope patterns at the K-Pg, due to the underlying action of the solubility pump. While primary productivity recovered within a few tens of thousands of years, inefficiency in carbon export to the deep sea lasted much longer. This phased recovery scenario reconciles competing hypotheses previously put forward to explain the K-Pg carbon isotope records, and explains both spatially variable patterns of change in marine productivity across the event and a lack of extinction at the deep sea floor. In sum, we provide insights into the drivers of the last mass extinction, the recovery of marine carbon cycling in a postextinction world, and the way in which marine life imprints its isotopic signal onto the geological record.
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