An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body
- Creators
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Schmitz, Birger
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Farley, Kenneth A.
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Goderis, Steven
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Heck, Philipp R.
- Bergström, Stig M.
- Boschi, Samuele
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Claeys, Philippe
- Debaille, Vinciane
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Dronov, Andrei
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van Ginneken, Matthias
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Harper, David A. T.
- Iqbal, Faisal
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Friberg, Johan
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Liao, Shiyong
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Martin, Ellinor
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Meier, Matthias M. M.
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Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Bernhard
- Soens, Bastien
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Wieler, Rainer
- Terfelt, Fredrik
Abstract
The breakup of the L-chondrite parent body in the asteroid belt 466 million years (Ma) ago still delivers almost a third of all meteorites falling on Earth. Our new extraterrestrial chromite and ^3He data for Ordovician sediments show that the breakup took place just at the onset of a major, eustatic sea level fall previously attributed to an Ordovician ice age. Shortly after the breakup, the flux to Earth of the most fine-grained, extraterrestrial material increased by three to four orders of magnitude. In the present stratosphere, extraterrestrial dust represents 1% of all the dust and has no climatic significance. Extraordinary amounts of dust in the entire inner solar system during >2 Ma following the L-chondrite breakup cooled Earth and triggered Ordovician icehouse conditions, sea level fall, and major faunal turnovers related to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.
Additional Information
© 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). Submitted 21 March 2019. Accepted 19 August 2019. Published 18 September 2019. We are grateful to Göran, Gustav, Sören, and Stig Thor for long-term support with samples from the Thorsberg quarry. K. Deppert, P. Eriksson, and P. Kristiansson made this study possible at Lund University. Three reviewers helped to improve the paper. This is a contribution to the ongoing Ordovician IGCP 653 project. B.Sc. was supported by the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and an ERC-Advanced grant (ASTROGEOBIOSPHERE 213000). P.R.H. was supported by the Tawani Foundation. M.M.M.M. was supported by an Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. A.D. was supported by the Regional Governmental Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University and Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant N19-05-00748). D.A.T.H. was supported by a fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. S.G., P.C., M.v.G., and B.So. were supported by the Belgian Science Policy (Belspo), the FWO, and the VUB strategic program. V.D. was supported by the FRS-FNRS, Belspo, and the ERC-Starting Grant (ISoSyC 336718). Author contributions: B.Sc. conceived and coordinated the project. K.A.F. performed the He-3 analyses. S.G. led the study of the Antarctic micrometeorites, supported by P.C., V.D., M.v.G., and B.So.. P.R.H. interpreted the 21Ne results and drafted Fig. 3, with help from R.W. and M.M.M.M. B.P.-E. performed the osmium isotope analyses. A.D. contributed to the regional geology and sea level history of the Ordovician. J.F. focused on the effects of extraterrestrial dust in atmospheres. S.M.B. and D.A.T.H. were responsible for the broad area of Ordovician paleontology and stratigraphy. B.Sc., S.B., F.I., S.L., and E.M. recovered and analyzed the spinels and interpreted their origin. F.T. supervised the work in the Astrogeobiology Laboratory. B.Sc. wrote the first draft, and all authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the final text. The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.Attached Files
Published - eaax4184.full.pdf
Supplemental Material - aax4184_Data_file_S1.pdf
Supplemental Material - aax4184_Data_file_S2.xlsx
Supplemental Material - aax4184_Data_file_S3.xlsx
Supplemental Material - aax4184_Data_file_S4.xlsx
Supplemental Material - aax4184_Data_file_S5.pdf
Supplemental Material - aax4184_SM.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 98753
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190919-113942345
- Swedish Research Council
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
- 213000
- European Research Council (ERC)
- Tawani Foundation
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
- Regional Governmental Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University
- N19-05-00748
- Russian Foundation for Basic Research
- Leverhulme Trust
- Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO)
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO)
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS)
- 336718
- European Research Council (ERC)
- Created
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2019-09-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences