Sun Jimin, Ni Xijun, Bi Shundong, Wu Wenyu, Ye Jie, Meng Jin, Windley Brian F
1] Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China [2] CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences.
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Sci Rep. 2014 Dec 12;4:7463. doi: 10.1038/srep07463.
The Eocene-Oligocene Boundary (~34 million years ago) marks one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates in the world oceans and of mammalian fauna in Europe and Asia in the Cenozoic era. A shift to a cooler climate across this boundary has been suggested as the cause of this extinction in the marine environment, but there is no manifold evidence for a synchronous turnover of flora, fauna and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in a single terrestrial site in Asia to support this hypothesis. Here we report new data of magnetostratigraphy, pollen and climatic proxies in the Asian interior across the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary; our results show that climate change forced a turnover of flora and fauna, suggesting there was a change from large-size perissodactyl-dominant fauna in forests under a warm-temperate climate to small rodent/lagomorph-dominant fauna in forest-steppe in a dry-temperate climate across the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary. These data provide a new terrestrial record for this significant Cenozoic environmental event.
始新世 - 渐新世边界（约3400万年前）标志着世界海洋中最大规模的海洋无脊椎动物灭绝事件之一，以及新生代欧洲和亚洲哺乳动物群的灭绝事件。有人认为，跨越这一边界向更寒冷气候的转变是海洋环境中此次灭绝事件的原因，但在亚洲的一个单一陆地区域，没有多方面的证据表明在始新世 - 渐新世边界处植物群、动物群和气候发生了同步转变以支持这一假说。在此，我们报告了亚洲内陆跨越始新世 - 渐新世边界的磁地层学、花粉和气候指标的新数据；我们的结果表明，气候变化促使了动植物群的更替，这表明在跨越始新世 - 渐新世边界时，从暖温带气候下森林中大型奇蹄目动物占主导的动物群，转变为干旱温带气候下森林草原中以小型啮齿动物/兔形目动物为主导的动物群。这些数据为这一重要的新生代环境事件提供了新的陆地记录。
