Earth Recovered Quickly From Extinction Event

jmoloug1 writes "Traditional theory is that the earth took up to 10 million years to recover from the dinosaur extinction event. However a newly discovered site has revealed that this estimate may be way off. CNN has the article describing how quickly a tropical rain forest grew after the catastrophic event 65 million years a go."

Comments

I love to paleontology numbers...

[pruneau]

Good news guys, if we manage to trigger a nuclear winter, it will only take 1.4 millions years to have forests back instead of 10 !

...Plan accordingly for the food into your nuclear shelter guys.

Krakatau

[Perdo]

Krakatau volcano blew it's top in 1883. It has a ring of rainforest girdleing it's base despite it's continuing eruptions. Krakatau's explosion is still considered to be the most energetic single event in civilized history. Krakatau is now home to many species of birds, monkeys and smaller cousins of the komodo dragons.

I'd venture that life did not take 1.5 million years to recover from the extinction event. We just have not looked in the right places for the right fossils. I'll bet that someday we will find a meteoric Vesuvius/Pele, and right on top of it we will find the fossils of life that came back immediately after the event.

Re:Krakatau

[Austenite]

Yes, but Krakatoa didn't cause extinctions of species, except in the (relatively) local area. The re-population by migration is nearly instant, on a geological timesecale. I mean, you're only talking 120 years. Perhaps if we'd found that a new ecosystem consisting of previously un-evolved lifeforms had developed around Krakatoa in the last 120 years, then your point about finding the right fossils might be valid.

Re:Krakatau

[cp99]

I agree with all of your post, bar one small point. I believe that the biggest eruption in civilised history occured at Taupo in New Zealand in 186 AD. While NZ wasn't inhabited at the time, it was recorded in China and Rome.

If you look at a map of the North Island of New Zealand, you'll see a large lake (with great fishing). That's the caldera left behind.

(Interesting link.)

Re:Krakatau

[MadAhab]

I think you're right. There's no reason to think that life would have been so devastated. Species, yes, but remember that everything that dies leaves an expansion niche for something that survives. It's possible, of course, that you wouldn't have much diversity for a while, but as surviving species expanded into different kinds of enviroments (previously made unavailable due to competing species), you'd see differentiation rather rapidly.

Re:Krakatau

[j_w_d]

It's interesting to consider the issues about this. I had never considered that vegetation populations would be slow to recover from the K-T event. You would think that after the primary dust load had settled, vegetation would start to rebound. That would imply no more than decades for the earliest paleocene plant communities to begin to re-form. The most successfull early colonists would be forms that were not dependent upon external polinators. There would be a period following where plant populations partially dependent upon animal and insect vectors to spread and reproduce waited until the necessary vectors appeared, or the plant species adapted or became fully extinct.

Re:Krakatau

[Perdo]

There would be a period where extremophiles ruled the earth. Given their vast variety, it would not take long for them to capitalize on areas that were both less extreme and lacking in competition. Look at some of the non-extremophile phyla life forms that nonetheless live in extreme environments. Ice worms live in glaciers and have antifreeze for blood. Blind cave dwelling newts and fish whose ancestors have not seen light for 20,000 years. Rodents who spend their entire lives underground and have an ant like organization and social structure. Arctic wildflowers that have 5 weeks of summer and are absolutely frozen the rest of the year. The ability of life to re-colonize devastated areas even if evolution is required to survive in it's new environment is well documented. Obvious examples are Krakatau but parallels can be found almost everywhere. Antibiotics are the comet to human diseases. Disease adapts to the new hostile environment and moves back in as few as 100 bacterial generations. 100 generations for arctic wildflowers to survive at the equator.

Luther Burbank created the Shasta daisy, yellow center with white petals, around the turn of the century. I have seen them growing in Alaskan tundra. 100 years to go from Sunny California to becoming a dominant arctic wildflower.

Recovery from the extinction event did not take 1.5 million years

Re:This just in

[Perdo]

wrong story.. I think you want the worldcom/anderson story. This is about a quick envirimental recovery not a quik economic recovery. That will probably take longer than 1.5 million years

Nonlinear Relationship

[4of12]

Yeah, but Krakatau was still limited in magnitude, despite being the largest recorded eruption in civilized history ( I think Toba in Sumatra was the largest if you include less civilized history.)

I think the rapidity with which life regenerates has a lot to do with the magnitude of the event.

The supervolcanoes, despite their devastating effects, don't seem to be quite as potentially catastrophic as collisions with space debris.

A sufficiently large comet or asteroid really could wipe out so much of higher life forms that Earth might have to re-start with single cell organisms.

Re:Dating Methods

[j_w_d]

Speaking as an archaeologist, it was NOT an archaeological find. The pertinent fields are paleobotany and paleontology. Archaeology deals with human traces and the remains of human activities. The events discussed in the article relate to a period long before there were any homonids, let alone any humans. I realize many bookstores shelve dinosaur books right there alongside archaeological books, but that is merely a failing in modern education.

The idea that geological dating methods are "unfalsifiable" is a view pushed by "Creation Science" - an "oxymaroon". Besides being the darling idea of Creationists and "young earthers," the idea happens to be based upon assumptions about science and geology that are either wrong or straw-man arguments. Geological dating methods are methodologoically justified estimates based upon empirical observation and generalization. They are not theories. If you do not like the dates and have some reason for challenging them, go out, collect the necessary data and offer your own estimate. Charles Lyell could do it; so can you. Geological dates are not considered absolute by anyone who produces or uses them. That is a practice only encountered in politics and religion.

If you want to know more about the crater, point a search engine - google is good - at "K-T boundary Yucatan" and you will receive many pointers to large numbers of web pages.
The name of the crater, BTW, is "Chicxulub."