CaltechAUTHORS
Published September 18, 2019 | Version Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Lund University
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon Vrije Universiteit Brussel
  • 4. ROR icon Field Museum of Natural History
  • 5. ROR icon University of Chicago
  • 6. ROR icon The Ohio State University
  • 7. ROR icon Université Libre de Bruxelles
  • 8. ROR icon Geological Institute
  • 9. ROR icon Kazan Federal University
  • 10. ROR icon Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
  • 11. ROR icon Durham University
  • 12. ROR icon Purple Mountain Observatory
  • 13. ROR icon University of Science and Technology of China
  • 14. ROR icon ETH Zurich
  • 15. ROR icon Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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

Identifiers

Eprint ID
98753
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190919-113942345

Funding

Swedish Research Council
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
European Research Council (ERC)
213000
Tawani Foundation
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Regional Governmental Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
N19-05-00748
Leverhulme Trust
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO)
Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS)
European Research Council (ERC)
336718

Dates

Created
2019-09-19
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)