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Life and land engulfed in the late Early Jurassic Karoo lavas of southern Gondwana
- Emese M. Bordy, Martin G. Lockley, Akhil Rampersadh, Riyaad Mukaddam, Howard V. Head
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- Journal:
- Geological Magazine / Volume 160 / Issue 4 / April 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 December 2022, pp. 645-666
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- Article
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The rock record from the late Early Jurassic in southern Africa encompasses the history of voluminous continental flood basalt outpourings associated with the magmatic events in the Karoo–Ferrar Large Igneous Province (LIP) in southern and eastern Gondwana. This multiphase magmatism produced one of Earth’s largest continental flood basalt successions volumetrically and is assumed to have been a main driving mechanism in late Early Jurassic global environmental perturbations, including mass extinctions and changes in climate. In southern Africa, these Lower Jurassic flood basalts are interbedded with fossiliferous sedimentary rocks, which in turn host the last signs of ‘Karoo life’ in the form of fossil plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, including the trackways of hopping mammals and the ultimate Karoo dinosaurs. The sedimentology and palaeontology of the interbeds archived depositional and biotic processes in running water as well as in and around shallow, up to ∼10 m deep freshwater lakes and ponds in the late Early Jurassic. This study explains how a complex freshwater palaeo-habitat prevailed – albeit temporarily – in this extremely stressful environment, which was unlike any modern volcanic system. The evidence collectively points to seasonally wet, warm temperate climatic conditions during the early phases of Karoo volcanism. Moreover, the evidence in the rocks also suggests that the dynamic volcanic conditions resulted in shifting habitats that likely facilitated the migration of the ultimate Karoo biota towards the north and west, away from the main Karoo land of fire, just before Gondwana started to disassemble. This refinement of the environmental dynamics in southern Gondwana presented herein lays the groundwork for future high-resolution volcanological, geochronological and chemostratigraphical studies aimed at the nuanced understanding of the global environmental effect of the Karoo–Ferrar LIP.
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- By Waiel Almoustadi, Brian J. Anderson, David B. Auyong, Michael Avidan, Michael J. Avram, Roland J. Bainton, Jeffrey R. Balser, Juliana Barr, W. Scott Beattie, Manfred Blobner, T. Andrew Bowdle, Walter A. Boyle, Eugene B. Campbell, Laura F. Cavallone, Mario Cibelli, C. Michael Crowder, Ola Dale, M. Frances Davies, Mark Dershwitz, George Despotis, Clifford S. Deutschman, Brian S. Donahue, Marcel E. Durieux, Thomas J. Ebert, Talmage D. Egan, Helge Eilers, E. Wesley Ely, Charles W. Emala, Alex S. Evers, Heidrun Fink, Pierre Foëx, Stuart A. Forman, Helen F. Galley, Josephine M. Garcia-Ferrer, Robert W. Gereau, Tony Gin, David Glick, B. Joseph Guglielmo, Dhanesh K. Gupta, Howard B. Gutstein, Robert G. Hahn, Greg B. Hammer, Brian P. Head, Helen Higham, Laureen Hill, Kirk Hogan, Charles W. Hogue, Christopher G. Hughes, Eric Jacobsohn, Roger A. Johns, Dean R. Jones, Max Kelz, Evan D. Kharasch, Ellen W. King, W. Andrew Kofke, Tom C. Krejcie, Richard M. Langford, H. T. Lee, Isobel Lever, Jerrold H. Levy, J. Lance Lichtor, Larry Lindenbaum, Hung Pin Liu, Geoff Lockwood, Alex Macario, Conan MacDougall, M. B. MacIver, Aman Mahajan, Nándor Marczin, J. A. Jeevendra Martyn, George A. Mashour, Mervyn Maze, Thomas McDowell, Stuart McGrane, Berend Mets, Patrick Meybohm, Charles F. Minto, Jonathan Moss, Mohamed Naguib, Istvan Nagy, Nick Oliver, Paul S. Pagel, Pratik P. Pandharipande, Piyush Patel, Andrew J. Patterson, Robert A. Pearce, Ronald G. Pearl, Misha Perouansky, Kristof Racz, Chinniampalayam Rajamohan, Nilesh Randive, Imre Redai, Stephen Robinson, Richard W. Rosenquist, Carl E. Rosow, Uwe Rudolph, Francis V. Salinas, Robert D. Sanders, Sunita Sastry, Michael Schäfer, Jens Scholz, Thomas W. Schnider, Mark A. Schumacher, John W. Sear, Frédérique S. Servin, Jeffrey H. Silverstein, Tom De Smet, Martin Smith, Joe Henry Steinbach, Markus Steinfath, David F. Stowe, Gary R. Strichartz, Michel M. R. F. Struys, Isao Tsuneyoshi, Robert A. Veselis, Arthur Wallace, Robert P. Walt, David C. Warltier, Nigel R. Webster, Jeanine Wiener-Kronish, Troy Wildes, Paul Wischmeyer, Ling-Gang Wu, Stephen Yang
- Edited by Alex S. Evers, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Mervyn Maze, University of California, San Francisco, Evan D. Kharasch, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis
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- Book:
- Anesthetic Pharmacology
- Published online:
- 11 April 2011
- Print publication:
- 10 March 2011, pp viii-xiv
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