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1.
Air bubbles in polar ice cores indicate that about 300 years ago the atmospheric mixing ratio of methane began to increase rapidly. Today the mixing ratio is about 1.7 parts per million by volume, and, having doubled once in the past several hundred years, it will double again in the next 60 years if current rates continue. Carbon isotope ratios in methane up to 350 years in age have been measured with as little as 25 kilograms of polar ice recovered in 4-meter-long ice-core segments. The data show that (i) in situ microbiology or chemistry has not altered the ice-core methane concentrations, and (ii) that the carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratio of atmospheric CH(4) in ice from 100 years and 300 years ago was about 2 per mil lower than at present. Atmospheric methane has a rich spectrum of isotopic sources: the ice-core data indicate that anthropogenic burning of the earth's biomass is the principal cause of the recent (13)CH(4) enrichment, although other factors may also contribute.  相似文献   

2.
More than 85 percent of Australian terrestrial genera with a body mass exceeding 44 kilograms became extinct in the Late Pleistocene. Although most were marsupials, the list includes the large, flightless mihirung Genyornis newtoni. More than 700 dates onGenyornis eggshells from three different climate regions document the continuous presence of Genyornis from more than 100,000 years ago until their sudden disappearance 50,000 years ago, about the same time that humans arrived in Australia. Simultaneous extinction of Genyornis at all sites during an interval of modest climate change implies that human impact, not climate, was responsible.  相似文献   

3.
The Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB) event, which occurred about 251.4 million years ago, is marked by the most severe mass extinction in the geologic record. Recent studies of some PTB sites indicate that the extinctions occurred very abruptly, consistent with a catastrophic, possibly extraterrestrial, cause. Fullerenes (C60 to C200) from sediments at the PTB contain trapped helium and argon with isotope ratios similar to the planetary component of carbonaceous chondrites. These data imply that an impact event (asteroidal or cometary) accompanied the extinction, as was the case for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event about 65 million years ago.  相似文献   

4.
Evidence for a major meteorite impact on the earth 65 million years ago is shown by the presence of meteoritic debris in the "fish clay" from Denmark representing the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Noble metals (iridium, osmium, gold, platinum, rhenium, ruthenium, palladium, nickel, and cobalt), which are sensitive indicators of meteorites and are normally depleted on the terrestrial surface by factors of 10(4) to 10(2) relative to cosmic abundances, are enriched in this boundary clay by factors of 5 to 100 over the expected abundances. With the exception of rhenium, all the enriched noble metals in the clay are present in cosmic proportions, indicating that the impacting celestial body had not undergone gross chemical differentiation. The major extinction of life on the earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period may be related to the meteorite impact.  相似文献   

5.
Calibrating the end-Permian mass extinction   总被引:2,自引:0,他引:2  
The end-Permian mass extinction was the most severe biodiversity crisis in Earth history. To better constrain the timing, and ultimately the causes of this event, we collected a suite of geochronologic, isotopic, and biostratigraphic data on several well-preserved sedimentary sections in South China. High-precision U-Pb dating reveals that the extinction peak occurred just before 252.28 ± 0.08 million years ago, after a decline of 2 per mil (‰) in δ(13)C over 90,000 years, and coincided with a δ(13)C excursion of -5‰ that is estimated to have lasted ≤20,000 years. The extinction interval was less than 200,000 years and synchronous in marine and terrestrial realms; associated charcoal-rich and soot-bearing layers indicate widespread wildfires on land. A massive release of thermogenic carbon dioxide and/or methane may have caused the catastrophic extinction.  相似文献   

6.
A deep-sea core from the Caribbean contains a layer of sediment highly enriched in meteoritic iridium. This layer underlies a layer of North American microtektites dated at 34.4 million years ago and coincides with the extinction of five major species of Radiolaria. It is suggested that a massive, chemically undifferentiated meteorite collided with the earth, producing the tektites and leading to extinctions 34 million years ago.  相似文献   

7.
Insects possess a surprisingly extensive fossil record. Compilation of the geochronologic ranges of insect families demonstrates that their diversity exceeds that of preserved vertebrate tetrapods through 91 percent of their evolutionary history. The great diversity of insects was achieved not by high origination rates but rather by low extinction rates comparable to the low rates of slowly evolving marine invertebrate groups. The great radiation of modern insects began 245 million years ago and was not accelerated by the expansion of angiosperms during the Cretaceous period. The basic trophic machinery of insects was in place nearly 100 million years before angiosperms appeared in the fossil record.  相似文献   

8.
On tropical Pacific islands, a human-caused "biodiversity crisis" began thousands of years ago and has nearly run its course. Bones identified from archaeological sites show that most species of land birds and populations of seabirds on those islands were exterminated by prehistoric human activities. The loss of birdlife in the tropical Pacific may exceed 2000 species (a majority of which were species of flightless rails) and thus represents a 20 percent worldwide reduction in the number of species of birds. The current global extinction crisis therefore has historic precedent.  相似文献   

9.
The Middle Mississippian blastoid (Phylum Echinodermata) extinction event (about 340 million years ago) was a rapid, habitat-specific extinction. Blastoids became rare or absent in shallow-water environments after the extinction, and this change was probably synchronous worldwide. Onshore-offshore habitat shifts have been recognized as an important historical trend among marine benthos. Unlike trends exhibited by other groups, blastoids appear to have repopulated shallow-water habitats after a period of diminished diversity and abundance.  相似文献   

10.
Geomagnetic polarity change and faunal extinction in the southern ocean   总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1  
Paleomnlagnietic polarity changes have been detected in nine deep-sea sedimentary cores (from the Pacific-Antarctic Basin) in which an extinction horizon of a radiolarian assemblage was previously independently determined. The depths of the polarity change 0.7 million years ago and the faunal boundary are closely correlated, confirming that the faunal extinction was locally virtually synchronous. Although the reason for the faunal extinction is unknown. the possibility of causal relationships between faunal extinction and factors directly involved with sedimentation rate, sedimentation rate variation, and sediment type appears to be excluded.  相似文献   

11.
The mass extinction at the end of the Permian was the most profound in the history of life. Fundamental to understanding its cause is determining the tempo and duration of the extinction. Uranium/lead zircon data from Late Permian and Early Triassic rocks from south China place the Permian-Triassic boundary at 251.4 +/- 0.3 million years ago. Biostratigraphic controls from strata intercalated with ash beds below the boundary indicate that the Changhsingian pulse of the end-Permian extinction, corresponding to the disappearance of about 85 percent of marine species, lasted less than 1 million years. At Meishan, a negative excursion in delta13C at the boundary had a duration of 165,000 years or less, suggesting a catastrophic addition of light carbon.  相似文献   

12.
本文在对重庆市耕地面积、粮食作物单位面积产量、农村劳动力数量和质量进行单项预测的基础上,用参数目标规划方法预测出重庆市1990年、1995年、2000年的粮食最高产量分别为63.5539亿公斤、67.0204亿公斤、71.1560亿公斤;如遇旱年,则预期产量将分别降至54.6339亿斤、57.9902亿公斤、61.3007亿公斤。并对未来十余年粮食总产量的增长特点进行了分析论证。  相似文献   

13.
Multiple causes of high extinction risk in large mammal species   总被引:2,自引:0,他引:2  
Many large animal species have a high risk of extinction. This is usually thought to result simply from the way that species traits associated with vulnerability, such as low reproductive rates, scale with body size. In a broad-scale analysis of extinction risk in mammals, we find two additional patterns in the size selectivity of extinction risk. First, impacts of both intrinsic and environmental factors increase sharply above a threshold body mass around 3 kilograms. Second, whereas extinction risk in smaller species is driven by environmental factors, in larger species it is driven by a combination of environmental factors and intrinsic traits. Thus, the disadvantages of large size are greater than generally recognized, and future loss of large mammal biodiversity could be far more rapid than expected.  相似文献   

14.
We have found evidence for a bolide impacting Earth in the mid-Devonian ( approximately 380 million years ago), including high concentrations of shocked quartz, Ni, Cr, As, V, and Co anomalies; a large negative carbon isotope shift (-9 per mil); and microspherules and microcrysts at Jebel Mech Irdane in the Anti Atlas desert near Rissani, Morocco. This impact is important because it is coincident with a major global extinction event (Kacák/otomari event), suggesting a possible cause-and-effect relation between the impact and the extinction. The result may represent the extinction of as many as 40% of all living marine animal genera.  相似文献   

15.
The Siberian Traps represent one of the most voluminous flood basalt provinces on Earth. Laser-heating (40)Ar/(39)Ar data indicate that the bulk of these basalts was erupted over an extremely short time interval (900,000 +/- 800,000 years) beginning at about 248 million years ago at mean eruption rates of greater than 1.3 cubic kilometers per year. Such rates are consistent with a mantle plume origin. Magmatism was not associated with significant lithospheric rifting; thus, mantle decompression resulting from rifting was probably not the primary cause of widespread melting. Inception of Siberian Traps volcanism coincided (within uncertainty) with a profound faunal mass extinction at the Permo-Triassic boundary 249 +/- 4 million years ago; these data thus leave open the question of a genetic relation between the two events.  相似文献   

16.
Organic remains, especially dung, of extinct ground sloths provide ideal material for radiocarbon dating. Rampart Cave, Arizona, revealed periodic occupation at intervals by the Shasta ground sloth from before 40,000 years ago until 11,000 years ago. Dates from other caves in the arid Southwest indicate that the Shasta ground sloth disappeared at very soon after the time of Clovis big game hunters. Ground sloth remains in South America are slightly younger. The timing of ground sloth extinction is in accord with the model of explosive overkill.  相似文献   

17.
Pelagic cherts of Japan and British Columbia, Canada, recorded a long-term and worldwide deep-sea anoxic (oxygen-depleted) event across the Permo-Triassic (or Paleozoic and Mesozoic) boundary (251 ± 2 million years ago). The symmetry in lithostratigraphy and redox condition of the boundary sections suggest that the superocean Panthalassa became totally stratified for nearly 20 million years across the boundary. The timing of onset, climax, and termination of the oceanic stratification correspond to global biotic events including the end-Guadalupian decline, the end-Permian extinction, and mid-Triassic recovery.  相似文献   

18.
Food web recovery from mass extinction is poorly understood. We analyzed insect-feeding damage on 14,999 angiosperm leaves from 14 latest Cretaceous, Paleocene, and early Eocene sites in the western interior United States. Most Paleocene floras have low richness of plants and of insect damage. However, a low-diversity 64.4-million-year-old flora from southeastern Montana shows extremely high insect damage richness, especially of leaf mining, whereas an anomalously diverse 63.8-million-year-old flora from the Denver Basin shows little damage and virtually no specialized feeding. These findings reveal severely unbalanced food webs 1 to 2 million years after the end-Cretaceous extinction 65.5 million years ago.  相似文献   

19.
Cosgrove R 《Science (New York, N.Y.)》1989,243(4899):1706-1708
Basal dates of 30,420 years before present (BP) from a limestone cave in the Florentine River valley and 30,840 BP from a sandstone rockshelter in the Shannon River valley on the edge of the central Tasmanian highlands indicate colonization of Tasmania 8,000 years earlier than previously thought. These data indicate that people arrived before the Bassian Bridge was exposed about 23,000 years ago and support evidence that Tasmania and Australia may have been connected intermittently during the past 50,000 years. The dates support earlier suggestions that the Tasmanian inland was an important focus for systematic occupation and exploitation by human groups and dispel a belief that the Aboriginal economy 30,000 years ago was based on littoral, lacustral, and riverine resources. The absence of megafauna at both sites points to their extinction by 30,000 years ago in Tasmania. The people inhabiting Tasmania at this time, together with those at Monte Verde in Chile, were the most southerly humans on Earth.  相似文献   

20.
Recent advances in radiometric dating and isotopic stratigraphy have resulted in a different placement of the Permian-Triassic boundary within the sedimentary sequence of the Sydney Basin of southeastern Australia. This boundary at 251 million years ago was a time of abrupt decline in both diversity and provincialism of floras in southeastern Australia and extinction of the Glossopteris flora. Early Triassic vegetation was low in diversity and dominated by lycopods and voltzialean conifers. The seed fern Dicroidium appeared in the wake of Permian-Triassic boundary floral reorganization, but floras dominated by Dicroidium did not attain Permian levels of diversity and provinciality until the Middle Triassic (244 million years ago).  相似文献   

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