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Asteroid breakup linked to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event

2007; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/ngeo.2007.37

1752-0908

Birger Schmitz, David A. T. Harper, Bernhard Peucker‐Ehrenbrink, Svend Stouge, C. Alwmark, Anders Cronholm, Stig M. Bergström, Mario Tassinari, Xiaofeng Wang,

Geological and Geochemical Analysis

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event coincides ~470 million years ago with the break-up of a large asteroid and the resultant frequent bombardment of Earth with asteroid fragments. The rise and diversification of shelled invertebrate life in the early Phanerozoic eon occurred in two major stages. During the first stage (termed as the Cambrian explosion), a large number of new phyla appeared over a short time interval ∼540 Myr ago. Biodiversity at the family, genus and species level, however, remained low until the second stage marked by the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event in the Middle Ordovician period1,2,3. Although this event represents the most intense phase of species radiation during the Palaeozoic era and led to irreversible changes in the biological make-up of Earth’s seafloors, the causes of this event remain elusive. Here, we show that the onset of the major phase of biodiversification ∼470 Myr ago coincides with the disruption in the asteroid belt of the L-chondrite parent body—the largest documented asteroid breakup event during the past few billion years4,5. The precise coincidence between these two events is established by bed-by-bed records of extraterrestrial chromite, osmium isotopes and invertebrate fossils in Middle Ordovician strata in Baltoscandia and China. We argue that frequent impacts on Earth of kilometre-sized asteroids—supported by abundant Middle Ordovician fossil meteorites and impact craters6—accelerated the biodiversification process.