Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna and climate at the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary in Asia

The Eocene–Oligocene Boundary (~34 million years ago) marks one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates in the world oceans and of mammalian fauna in Europe and Asia in the Cenozoic era. A shift to a cooler climate across this boundary has been suggested as the cause of this extinction in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2014-12, Vol.4 (1), p.7463-7463, Article 7463
Main Authors: Sun, Jimin, Ni, Xijun, Bi, Shundong, Wu, Wenyu, Ye, Jie, Meng, Jin, Windley, Brian F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/33/445/209
704/2151/413
Animals
Asia
Biological Evolution
Climate
Climate Change
Ecosystem
Fossils
Geologic Sediments
Humanities and Social Sciences
Ice ages
Marine environment
multidisciplinary
Oceans
Oceans and Seas
Phylogeny
Science
Seasons
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Summary:The Eocene–Oligocene Boundary (~34 million years ago) marks one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates in the world oceans and of mammalian fauna in Europe and Asia in the Cenozoic era. A shift to a cooler climate across this boundary has been suggested as the cause of this extinction in the marine environment, but there is no manifold evidence for a synchronous turnover of flora, fauna and climate at the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary in a single terrestrial site in Asia to support this hypothesis. Here we report new data of magnetostratigraphy, pollen and climatic proxies in the Asian interior across the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary; our results show that climate change forced a turnover of flora and fauna, suggesting there was a change from large-size perissodactyl-dominant fauna in forests under a warm-temperate climate to small rodent/lagomorph-dominant fauna in forest-steppe in a dry-temperate climate across the Eocene–Oligocene Boundary. These data provide a new terrestrial record for this significant Cenozoic environmental event.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep07463