The study across the Pliensbachian–Toarcian boundary sedimentary record in the Bizanet section of the Pyrenean Basin (southern France) revealed the presence of solid bitumen. This secondary organic matter was characterized using petrographic (transmitted and reflected white lights, incident blue light, and scanning electron microscopy) and geochemical (total organic carbon, total sulfur, and insoluble residue) ...
Many aspects of the supposed hyperthermal Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE, Early Jurassic, c. 182 Ma) are well understood but a lack of robust palaeotemperature data severely limits reconstruction of the processes that drove the T-OAE and associated environmental and biotic changes. New oxygen isotope data from calcite shells of the benthic fauna suggest that bottom water temperatures in the western Tethys...
Body-size reduction is considered an important response to current climate warming and has been observed during past biotic crises, including the Pliensbachian-Toarcian crisis, a second-order mass extinction. However, in fossil cephalopod studies, the mechanisms and their potential link with climate are rarely investigated and palaeobiological scales of organization are not usually differentiated. Here, we hypo...
This is a contribution of the IGCP-655 project of the IUGS and UNESCO.
The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE) was characterized by a major disturbance to the global carbon(C)-cycle, and depleted oxygen in Earth's oceans resulting in marine mass extinction. Numerical models predict that increased organic carbon burial should drive a rise in atmospheric oxygen (pO2) leading to termination of an OAE after ∼1 Myr. Wildfire is highly responsive to changes in pO2 implying that fire-a...