End-Triassic carbon runs deep

Democracy runs deep

Most westerners would probably think that the roots of democracy lie in Ancient Athens, when the city state established the process by which all citizens, well, men of Athenian parentage, had an equal say in the decisions of the state. This model of ‘equally shared’ consensus decision making has wobbled, been ignored and often forgotten in intervening history but the concept has endured. But wa...

Selective extinction among end-Triassic European bivalves

Ongoing controversies surrounding the end-Triassic extinction highlight the need for identifying a causal mechanism leading to extinction. Bivalve data from Lombardia (Italy), Northern Calcareous Alps (Austria and Germany), and northwest Europe (England and Wales) provide the biologic signal of selective extinction to compare two competing extinction hypotheses: (1) sea-level change and associa...

Interpreting the Upper Triassic Carbon Isotope Record

End-Triassic mass extinction started by intrusive CAMP activity

The end-Triassic extinction is one of the Phanerozoic's largest mass extinctions. This extinction is typically attributed to climate change associated with degassing of basalt flows from the central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP). However, recent work suggests that the earliest known CAMP basalts occur above the extinction horizon and that climatic and biotic changes began before the earlies...

Cosmic Spherules from Triassic Deep-sea Sediments in Japan

Introduction: Cosmic spherules are subspherical to spherical particles of <1 mm diameter which are produced by melting of interplanetary dust and large objects during atmospheric entry. Although cosmic spherules are known principally from the ice sheets of polar regions and Cenozoic deep-sea sediments [1-3], a few spherules older than Mesozoic were recovered from the sedimentary rocks of pelagi...