• journal_title：Geology
• Contributor：Elke Schneebeli-Hermann ; Wolfram M. Kürschner ; Peter A. Hochuli ; David Ware ; Helmut Weissert ; Stefano M. Bernasconi ; Ghazala Roohi ; Khalil ur-Rehman ; Nicolas Goudemand ; Hugo Bucher
• Publisher：Geological Society of America
• Date：2013-05-01
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• Identifier：10.1130/G34047.1
• journal_abbrev：Geology
• issn：0091-7613
• volume：41
• issue：5
• firstpage：579
• section：Articles

The end-Permian mass extinction is marked by pronounced terrestrial ecosystem turnover and a severe loss of marine invertebrate biodiversity. This extinction event is accompanied by a prominent negative carbon-isotope excursion indicating massive changes in the global carbon cycle across the Permian-Triassic boundary. In this study, we present organic carbon-isotope data from land plant cuticles, fossil wood fragments, and bulk organic matter recovered from the Amb section in the Salt Range, Pakistan. We apply δ¹³C data from cuticles as a proxy record for the carbon-isotope composition of atmospheric CO₂ across the Permian-Triassic boundary. The data show an ∼5.5‰ negative excursion in terrestrial organic matter, reflecting the change in carbon-isotope composition of atmospheric CO₂. Our data demonstrate that these atmospheric changes coincide with biotic (mass extinction) and abiotic (carbonate carbon-isotope perturbation) changes in the marine realm, hence affecting the entire ocean-atmosphere system.