Mercury Spikes Indicate a Volcanic Trigger for the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction Event: An Example from a Deep Shelf of the Peri-Baltic Region

Scientific Reports
Justyna Smolarek-LachPaul B Wignall

Abstract

The Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME) was the second largest Phanerozoic crisis, but its cause remains elusive. Several triggering mechanisms have been proposed over the years, including bioevolutionary events, oceanographic changes, and geotectonic processes. Here, we report the presence of Hg spikes in the Zbrza PIG-1 borehole from the Upper Ordovician deep shelf sections of the peri-Baltic region. A strong positive anomaly in the lower late Katian (Hg/TOC = 2537.3 ppb/wt%) was noted. No correlation between Hg and TOC (R2 = 0.07) was distinguished in the Hirnantian, although several positive anomalies were found. Because the Hg/Mo ratio showed trends very similar to those of Hg/TOC, it seems likely that TOC values reflect the redox conditions. In order to evaluate the role of anoxia in levels of Hg enrichment several redox indicators were measured. These showed that the elevated mercury values in the Hirnantian are not caused by anoxia/euxinia because euxinic biomarkers (maleimides and aryl isoprenoids) are present in very low abundance and pyrite framboids are absent. In total, positive Hg/TOC anomalies occur in the lower late Katian, at the Katian - Hirnantian boundary, and in the late Hirnantian. The lack of a strong ...Continue Reading

References

Jan 29, 2011·Science·Seth FinneganWoodward W Fischer
Jan 30, 2015·Geobiology·K L FrenchR E Summons
Mar 25, 2016·Scientific Reports·Jean GuexUrs Schaltegger
Apr 7, 2016·Nature Communications·Alyson M ThibodeauFrank A Corsetti
Jun 21, 2017·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Lawrence M E PercivalJessica H Whiteside

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Citations

Mar 5, 2021·Vavilovskiĭ Zhurnal Genetiki I Selekt︠s︡ii·T M Khlebodarova, V A Likhoshvai
May 7, 2021·PeerJ·Vitaly A Likhoshvai, Tamara M Khlebodarova

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
chips
column chromatography

Software Mentioned

LOME

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