Plankton resistance and resilience through intervals of extreme Cenozoic climate change

Rapid marine oxygen fluctuations linked to climate-driven weathering during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction

The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME) comprised two pulses of biodiversity loss under contrasting climatic conditions, yet how these transitions reshaped marine redox conditions remains enigmatic. Here we present paired carbonate cerium isotope (δ142Ce) and neodymium isotope (δ146Nd) records from an Upper Ordovi...

Ediacaran coupling of climate and biosphere dynamics

Climate change is demonstrably linked to radiations, extinctions, and turnovers in the biosphere throughout the Phanerozoic (538.8 Ma to present). Here, we suggest this connection existed as early as the late Ediacaran (ca. 579−538.8 Ma), the first interval in Earth’s history to host complex macroscopic organisms, incl...

The impact of the Paleocene−Eocene Thermal Maximum on a lacustrine ecosystem in northeastern China: Perturbation and recovery

The Paleocene−Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a brief yet extreme warming event that profoundly affected marine ecosystems, whereas its impact on contemporaneous lacustrine systems remains less well constrained. This event highlights the fundamentally different responses of marine and terrestrial ecosystems to rapid...

Increased abyssal ocean density stratification across the Middle Pleistocene Transition

New Constraints on the Onset of Antarctic Glaciation From Combined Radiogenic Hafnium and Neodymium Isotopes

The drawdown of atmospheric CO2 likely triggered Antarctic glaciation during the Eocene‐Oligocene Transition (34 Ma). Accurately constraining this shift from “greenhouse” to an “icehouse” climate is essential for understanding global carbon cycle dynamics. However, conventional proxies often lack the sensitivity to cap...

Terrestrial Ecological Disturbances and Responses to Palaeowildfires at the Permian–Triassic Transition, A Review of Current Research

At the end of the Paleozoic Era, the Earth experienced an extreme ecosystem disturbance event, which was the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME); causing an irreversible global catastrophe for animals and plants. Fossil evidence from marine strata correlated by zircon U–Pb dating of volcanic ash supports the view o...