Evidence for Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary bolide "impact winter" conditions from New Jersey, USA
Evidence for Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary bolide "impact winter" conditions from New Jersey, USA
Geology (Boulder) (August 2016) 44 (8): 619-622
- Atlantic Coastal Plain
- Cenozoic
- climate change
- cooling
- cores
- Cretaceous
- Danian
- effects
- event stratigraphy
- impacts
- K-T boundary
- Leg 174AX
- lower Paleocene
- Maestrichtian
- marine environment
- Mesozoic
- New Jersey
- Ocean Drilling Program
- Paleocene
- paleoclimatology
- Paleogene
- paleotemperature
- sediments
- shelf environment
- stratigraphic boundary
- Tertiary
- United States
- Upper Cretaceous
- Hornerstown Formation
- New Egypt Formation
- TEX-86
- Search Farm
- Meirs Farm
- Fort Mammouth New Jersey
Abrupt and short-lived "impact winter" conditions have commonly been implicated as the main mechanism leading to the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (ca. 66 Ma), marking the end of the reign of the non-avian dinosaurs. However, so far only limited evidence has been available for such a climatic perturbation. Here we perform high-resolution TEX (sub 86) organic paleothermometry on three shallow cores from the New Jersey paleoshelf, (northeastern USA) to assess the impact-provoked climatic perturbations immediately following the K-Pg impact and to place these short-term events in the context of long-term climate evolution. We provide evidence of impact-provoked, severe climatic cooling immediately following the K-Pg impact. This so-called "impact winter" occurred superimposed on a long-term cooling trend that followed a warm phase in the latest Cretaceous.
