ANALYSIS OF ANCIENT MASS EXTINCTIONS FOR GENERATING STRATEGIES TO MANAGE OUTCOMES OF THE CURRENT MASS EXTINCTION IN MARINE ENVIRONMENTS (Invited Presentation)

The defining feature of a mass extinction is the global amount of extinction that occurred. However, there is finer-scale detail to the story, as seen in the ongoing modern mass extinction (the 6^th mass extinction), which exhibits variable effects among ecosystems and environments, and hence geographic areas. One way to better understand this biological and spatial variability is to examine ancient mass extinctions, particularly those with the largest amount of extinction (the Big 5 mass extinctions), where nature has already run the experiment. Some of the best cases for geographic and ecosystem variability are from the end-Permian mass extinction and the following Early Triassic, the ~5 million-year-long recovery period after this mass extinction. As a baseline for the recovery from this mass extinction, for much of the Early Triassic level bottom shallow seafloor ecosystems exhibit severe extinction, with only a depauperate fauna. However, a number of level bottom environments and locations during this time have been shown to have had a much more diverse and ecologically complex marine fauna, showing that recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction was temporally, geographically and ecologically patchy. It is this mosaic of extinction devastation and subsequent recovery that has led to the variety of recovery schemes utilized for the end-Permian mass extinction, which largely depend upon data type and availability for the ecosystem that is being studied. Further understanding this mosaic will be very important for planning and managing the recovery from the 6^th mass extinction. Establishing which Early Triassic ecosystems in level bottom environments suffered the most will point the way to modern studies on similar ecosystems and environments. Knowing which modern ecosystems are likely to suffer the most will allow for establishment of strategies to enable these settings to recover in more rapid fashion. Proceeding in a systematic way this important project of conservation paleobiology and paleoecology will allow better management of Earth's ecosystems as mass extinction stresses are diminished. If these modern stresses continue beyond expectations, a very important product of these investigations will be to predict where refugia might exist for organisms to survive the 6th mass extinction.