International Journal of Marine Science, 2024, Vol.14, No.2, 130-133 http://www.aquapublisher.com/index.php/ijms 130 Scientific Commentary Open Access Land-Sea Asynchrony: Revealing the Temporal Discrepancy in Terrestrial and Marine Extinctions at the End of the Permian Sarah McGrew International Journal of Marine Science, Aqua Publisher, Richmond, BC, V7A 4Z5, Canada Corresponding email: sarah.mcgrew@sophiapublisher.com International Journal of Marine Science, 2024, Vol.14, No.2, doi: 10.5376/ijms.2024.14.0016 Received: 10 Feb., 2024 Accepted: 21 Mar., 2024 Published: 29 Apr., 2024 Copyright © 2024 McGrew, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproductio4n in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: McGrew S., 2024, Land-sea asynchrony: revealing the temporal discrepancy in terrestrial and marine extinctions at the end of the permian, International Journal of Marine Science, 14(2): 130-133 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2024.14.0016) On January 31, 2024, Shu Zhong Shen and his research team published an article in the journal Science Advances titled "The terrestrial end Permian mass extraction in the paleotropics postdates the marine extrapolation." The article investigated the temporal shift of the last Permian mass extinction between land and ocean, focusing mainly on the land and transitional coastal strata in southwestern China. By high-precision zircon U-Pb isotope dating of tuff samples from several key strata, it was revealed that the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems actually began after the mass extinction of marine organisms. The analysis results show that the extinction process of this terrestrial ecosystem is not only later than that of marine ecosystems, but also exhibits significant asynchrony at different latitudes. Research has shown that the extinction of terrestrial organisms began in high latitude areas and gradually expanded to low latitude areas, with the entire extinction process spanning nearly one million years. The possible environmental and biological response mechanisms discussed in the article during the extinction process provide a new geological and temporal framework for understanding one of the most serious biological crises in Earth’s history. 1 Analysis of Experimental Data The study utilized high-precision zircon U-Pb isotope dating technology to analyze tuff samples from different strata in southwestern China. The results indicate a significant temporal difference between terrestrial and marine extinctions. Detailed chronological data confirmed that the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems began after the marine extinction and that this phenomenon was more pronounced in high-latitude regions, gradually extending to low-latitude areas. These data provide new insights into geographical and ecosystem responses, revealing the asynchrony of extinction events at different latitudes. Figure 2 shows the stratigraphic comparison of different locations in southwestern China (including the Guizhou Basin, Emeishan Igneous Province, and other regions) during the Late Permian Biomass Extinction Event (EPME). This chart reveals the correlation between environmental and biodiversity changes in land and transitional coastal areas by displaying the value changes in each location, the distribution of volcanic ash and organic carbon layers, and the extinction time points of specific plant communities. The stratigraphic records of each section not only display the richness of biodiversity changes, but also reflect the impact of major environmental disturbances such as volcanic activity on ecosystems. Figure 3 shows the distribution of 206U/238Pb ages of zircons in tuffs from the land and transitional coastal regions of southwest China. Using the Bayesian MCMC algorithm and weighted mean model, different colored bars and horizontal lines in the figure represent the estimated eruption ages of different samples and their error ranges. From the figure, it can be seen that the age distributions of different samples vary to some extent. These data reflect the volcanic activity history and sedimentary ages of the stratigraphy in the study area during the Late Permian. Specifically, some data from samples MD110217-3 and MD110217-2 were excluded due to nonconformity, highlighting the need for rigorous data screening and quality control when conducting geological chronological analyses.
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