Carbonates and Catastrophic Change

Mass extinctions are wisely assumed to result in the widespread loss of carbonate platforms. This is thought to be the result of mass extinction of carbonate-producing skeletal biota, and microbial consortia that promote carbonate production and lithification, rather than the appearance of conditions hostile to inorganic carbonate formation.  Hence, the health of complex reef ecosystems is often used as proxy for active carbonate production.

I am exploring the relationship between catastrophic environmental change (mass extinction events), the disruption of ecologically complex reef communities, and changes in carbonate production. In particular, detailed field observations from the Canning Basin, Western Australia now overturns received opinion that carbonate platforms and reef biotas are more susceptible to catastrophic environmental change. This work has demonstrated that carbonate production was not interrupted in the immediate aftermath of the Frasnian/Famennian (Late Devonian) mass extinction event; moreover, a new and complex reef ecology with a new biota of immigrant taxa was established.  Such studies highlight the need to document ecosystem recovery after mass extinction events using detailed palaeoecological and sedimentological field analyses rather than simple compilations of global diversity changes.

• ZHURAVLEV, A. Yu and WOOD, R.A. 2009. Controls on carbonate skeletal mineralogy: global CO₂ evolution and mass extinctions. Geology 37: 1123–1126
• WOOD, R. 2009. Reefs and changes in seawater chemistry, in The Biology of Coral Reefs (Ed. C R.C. Sheppard, S. K. Davy, and G. M. Pilling), 352 pp.
• ZHURAVLEV, A. Yu and WOOD, R.A. 2008. Eve of biomineralization: controls on carbonate mineralogy. Geology 36: 923-926.
• DUNNE, J.A., WILLIAMS, R.J., MARTINEZ, N., WOOD, R.A., ERWIN, D.H. 2008. Compilation and Network Analyses of Cambrian Food Webs. PLoS Biology 6: e102-107.
• WOOD, R. 2004. Palaeoecology of a post-extinction reef: the Famennian of the Canning Basin, Western Australia.Palaeontology, 47: 415-44
• WOOD, R.A. 2000. Novel paleoecology of a post-extinction reef: the Famennian (Late Devonian) of the Canning Basin, Northwestern Australia. Geology 28: 987-990.
• ZHURAVLEV, A. Yu. and WOOD, R.A. 1995. Anoxia as the cause of the late Early Cambrian extinction. Geology 24: 311-314.