Abstract
There have been many hypotheses for the global mass extinctions that occurred during the Phanerozoic history of the Earth, and although we cannot study the course of such a mass extinction in progress, it is possible to evaluate major pulses of extinction that have taken place recently in geological time. Explanations of the unusually high rates of extinction within late Cenozoic marine faunas of the tropical Western Atlantic have focused on possible blocking of nutrient-laden waters by the origin of the Isthmus of Panama1,2 and on Pleistocene cooling2,3,5,6 or regression2,4,5 of seas. Here we report that major episodes of molluscan extinction occurred at least as far north as Virginia, and we conclude that these episodes were caused primarily by refrigeration associated with the late Pliocene and Pleistocene growth of continental glaciers.
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Stanley, S., Campbell, L. Neogene mass extinction of Western Atlantic molluscs. Nature 293, 457–459 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/293457a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/293457a0
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