Planktic Evolution, Carbon Fluxes, and Ecologic Recovery from the Cretaceous-Paleogene Mass Extinction

白垩纪/古近纪（K/Pg）大灭绝是已知的五大灭绝事件中最年轻的一次。因为它只发生在6500万年前，所以这次事件的记录比其他四次大灭绝的记录要普遍得多，而且总的来说变化要小得多。因此，K/Pg事件为记录全球生态系统如何从有史以来最具生物破坏性的灾难之一中恢复提供了一个无与伦比的机会。我们建议利用这一机会，利用K/Pg地球化学和古生物学记录来测试海洋生物从大灭绝中恢复的基本假设。特别是，我们建议检验(1)地质记录是否支持浮游生物进化是有机通量恢复到深水的必要前提的假设（反之亦然）；(2)海洋浮游生物灭绝后的记录是否与低生产力的奇爱海洋模型或K/Pg大灭绝后生态系统正常生产力模型相一致。

9814790D'HondtThe Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) mass extinction was the youngest of the five largest known extinction events. Because it occurred only 65 million years ago, records of this event are much more common and generally much less altered than records of the other four great mass extinctions. Consequently, the K/Pg event provides an unparalleled opportunity for documenting how global ecosystems recovered from one of the most biologically devastating catastrophes ever identified. We propose to take advantage of that opportunity by using K/Pg geochemical and paleontologic records to test fundamental hypotheses of marine biological recovery from mass extinctions. In particular, we propose to test (1) whether the geologic record supports the hypothesis that planktic evolution was a necessary precondition for the recovery of organic fluxes to deep water (or vice versa), and (2) whether post-extinction records of marine plankton are consistent with a low-productivity Strangelove-ocean model or an altered-ecosystem normal-productivity model of ecologic recovery from the K/Pg mass extinction.