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Catastrophic Events & Mass Extinctions: Impacts And Beyond



Catastrophic Events & Mass Extinctions: Impacts And Beyond
July 9-12, 2000
Vienna, Austria
 
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/meetings/impact2000/

This conference will be the fourth of an informal series of meetings on mass
extinctions, global catastrophes, geological (and biological) implications
of impact events, and related investigations, which were initially held at
Snowbird, Utah, to discuss studies of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T)
boundary. The first and second of these meetings were held October 19-22,
1981, and October 20-23, 1988. The third one took place February 9-12, 1994,
in Houston, Texas. While the first two of these conferences had the K-T
boundary as their main topic, and included vigorous debates on the evidence
for an impact event 65 m.y. ago and alternative explanations, by 1994 this
evidence was overwhelming due to the discovery and confirmation of the
Chicxulub structure in Yucatan, Mexico, as the long-sought K-T boundary
impact crater. Therefore, more recently the discussion shifted to the
question if (and how) short-term, high-energy events influence the
biological evolution on the Earth, and if the observed changes in the
biological record show evidence of very short-term events other than the K-T
boundary event.

Current studies of the most profound extinction event in Earth's history, at
the end of the Permian, indicated a much shorter time frame for this event
than earlier data had suggested, with significant associated geochemical
anomalies. The cause for this global catastrophe is currently unknown, but
speculations center on massive volcanism or cometary impact. Other
boundaries and short-term events (e.g., late Devonian, Triassic-Jurassic,
late Eocene) in the stratigraphic record of the Earth are now receiving
unprecedented attention. Thus, we feel that the time has come to summarize
and discuss the current state of knowledge of the character and causes of
mass extinctions and catastrophic events in the history of our planet.

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