Abstract
Global warming, the most severe faunal mass extinction and the shift of biogeochemical cycles were observed in the ocean across the Permian-Triassic boundary about 252 million years ago, providing an analog to understanding the modern oceans. Along with the progressive global warming, the biogeochemical cycle was documented to show a shift from the decoupled processes of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur prior to the mass extinction to the coupled biogeochemical processes during faunal mass extinction. The coupled biogeochemical cycle was further observed to shift from the coupled C-N processes during the first episode of the faunal mass extinction to the coupled C-N-S processes during the second episode, diagnostic of the progressive development of more deteriorated marine environmental conditions and the more severe biotic crisis across the Permian-Triassic boundary. The biogeochemical cycles could thus be an indication to the progressive collapse of marine ecosystems triggered by the global warming in Earth history. In modern oceans, the coupled C-N cycle triggered by the global warming was observed in some regions. If these local C-N processes develop and expand to the global oceans, the coupled C-N-S processes might be brought into existence and the marine ecosystems are inevitable to suffer from complete collapse as observed at 252 million years ago.
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The work was supported by the State Key R & D Project (Grant No. 2016YFA0601100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41330103) and the 111 Project of China (Grant No. B08030)
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Xie, S. The shift of biogeochemical cycles indicative of the progressive marine ecosystem collapse across the Permian-Triassic boundary: An analog to modern oceans. Sci. China Earth Sci. 61, 1379–1383 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9207-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9207-3