Ancient Antarctic creatures weren’t kept safe from extinction

Scientists have theorized that whatever killed the dinosaurs didn’t make it all the way to the poles, but a new study found convincing evidence that at least one polar region was not a safe hiding place.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the new study’s analysis of more than 6,000 marine fossils found populations of marine animals living around Antarctica were just as decimated as dinosaurs living near the equator.

Ranging in age from 69- to 65-million-years-old, the study fossils had been excavated by researchers from Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula. One of the biggest collections of marine fossils from this period, it includes a massive amount species, from small crustaceans that lived on the seafloor to large surface-dwelling predators.

Grouping fossils for huge finds

The researchers said grouping fossils by age revealed a remarkable 65 to 70 percent drop in the quantity of Antarctic species around 66 million years ago, matching the same pattern for fossils of dinosaur and other animals living around the same period.

“Our research essentially shows that one day everything was fine – the Antarctic had a thriving and diverse marine community — and the next, it wasn’t,” study author James Witts, a PhD student in the University of Leeds, said in a news release. “Clearly, a very sudden and catastrophic event had occurred on Earth.

“This is the strongest evidence from fossils that the main driver of this extinction event was the after-effect of a huge asteroid impact, rather than a slower decline caused by natural changes to the climate or by severe volcanism stressing global environments,” Witts added.

Researchers have said organisms living near the polar regions were too far from the cause of the Cretaceous extinction to be badly affected, whether this was an asteroid impact or extreme volcanic activity. Moreover, it had been suggested animals and plants near the poles would have been more resistant to global climate change linked with an asteroid impact, due to living in environments that were always highly seasonal. For instance, life near the poles has to adjust to living in darkness for one half of the year and to an unpredictable food supply.

“These Antarctic rocks contain a truly exceptional assemblage of fossils that have yielded new and surprising information about the evolution of life 66 million years ago,” said study author Jane Francis from the British Antarctic Survey. “Even the animals that lived at the ends of the Earth close to the South Pole were not safe from the devastating effects of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period.”

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Image credit: James McKay (www.jamesmckay.info)

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