Terrestrial acidification during the end-Permian biosphere crisis?

2015/01/08 by Mark A. Sephton, Dan Jiao, Michael H. Engel +2 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Hydrocarbon exploration and reservoir analysis

paper · pdf · doi:10.1130/g36227.1

openalex publication_date 2015/01/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Excessive acid rainfall associated with emplacement of the Siberian Traps magmatic province is increasingly accepted as a major contributing factor to the end-Permian biosphere crisis. However, direct proxy evidence of terrestrial acidification is so far not available. In this paper, we seek to determine the probability that relative proportions of extractable monophenolic components from soil-derived organic matter in marine sediments provide a molecular proxy for estimating soil acidity. Intermittently low and high ratios of vanillic acid to vanillin detected in latest Permian and earliest Triassic deposits of the southern Alps, Italy, support concepts of pulses of severe acidification (pH <4) during the main phase of the biosphere crisis.

Citations

• Oxygen-containing aromatic compounds in a Late Permian sediment
• Environmental and biotic changes across the Permian–Triassic boundary in western Tethys: The Bulla parastratotype, Italy
• Life in the end-Permian dead zone
• Environmental mutagenesis during the end-Permian ecological crisis
• Fungal virulence at the time of the end-Permian biosphere crisis?

Cited by

• Impact of Permian mass extinctions on continental invertebrate infauna
• Permian–Triassic extinction event [wikipedia]