Mercury evidence from southern Pangea terrestrial sections for end-Permian global volcanic effects.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36596767.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-35272-8 and PMC identifier 9810726.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The latest Permian mass extinction (LPME) was triggered by magmatism of the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province (STLIP), which left an extensive record of sedimentary Hg anomalies at Northern Hemisphere and tropical sites. Here, we present Hg records from terrestrial sites in southern Pangea, nearly antipodal to contemporaneous STLIP activity, providing insights into the global distribution of volcanogenic Hg during this event and its environmental processing. These profiles (two from Karoo Basin, South Africa; two from Sydney Basin, Australia) exhibit significant Hg enrichments within the uppermost Permian extinction interval as well as positive Δ<sup>199</sup>Hg excursions (to ~0.3‰), providing evidence of long-distance atmospheric transfer of volcanogenic Hg. These results demonstrate the far-reaching effects of the Siberian Traps as well as refine stratigraphic placement of the LPME interval in the Karoo Basin at a temporal resolution of ~10<sup>5</sup> years based on global isochronism of volcanogenic Hg anomalies.
Medical subject headings
- Mercury