Op woensdag 1 December zal Dr. James Witts om 20.00 uur voor alle geïnteresseerden wat komen vertellen over zijn onderzoek naar Cephalopoda van de K-Pg grens op Antarctica. Om alvast een beter idee te krijgen van de inhoud van de lezing, kan je de abstract van Dr. Witts hieronder alvast doorlezen. Inschrijven is geopend voor zowel leden als niet-leden van Paleobiologische Kring en kan door je hier in te schrijven via het Google Inschrijvingsformulier.
Kijk voor het inschrijven voor de andere lezingen op de pagina van de: Autumn Paleo Lecture Series 2021.
Abstract – “No safer in the south: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event and recovery in Antarctica“
The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction of 66 million years ago is a key event in Earth history, with extinction of many previously dominant terrestrial and marine groups, most famously the non-avian dinosaurs. There has been much debate about the causes and timing of this mass extinction, with a persistent hypothesis being that high latitude ecosystems may have suffered lower levels of extinction or somehow coped better with this crisis. I will present a summary of new palaeontological data from the highest southern latitude onshore K–Pg section, located on Seymour Island, Antarctica (65°S today, and during the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene). Here an exceptionally thick and abundantly fossiliferous succession of marine sediments allows us to examine the nature, cause(s), and timing of the K-Pg extinction and recovery in a true high latitude setting. These data do not support claims for a gradual or less severe K–Pg event in Antarctica, suggesting that marine ecosystems were ‘no safer in the south’ from the effects of the Chicxulub asteroid impact – the most likely causal mechanism for this mass extinction event.
