TESTING THE ROLE OF CAMP VOLCANIC WINTERS AS A MAIN DRIVER OF TRIASSIC-JURASSIC CONTINENTAL ECOSYSTEM CHANGE WITH THE PROPOSED DINODRILL PROJECT (HARTFORD BASIN, USA)

A major motivation of the proposed Dinodrill coring project at Dinosaur State Park (CT) is to rigorously test the hypothesis that intense, volcanic winters accompanied the pCO₂ pulses caused by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). Although the CAMP pCO₂ did generate significant warming and ocean acidification, sulfur aerosol driven volcanic winters overwhelmed the global warming, driving the continental End Triassic mass Extinction (ETE) and subsequent delayed recovery. Similar mechanisms have been proposed for the other Phanerozoic flood basalt provinces and biotic turnover events.

Dinodrill will recover a continuous record of the entire lacustrine East Berlin Fm (Hartford Basin: CT, MA) at Dinosaur State Park (Rocky Hill, CT), uniquely suited for testing this hypothesis because the lower part of the formation was unambiguously deposited during the eruptions of the younger flows of the Preakness and Sanders Basalts of the Newark (NY, NJ, PA) and Culpeper (VA) Basins. Such clear synchroneity of known eruptions with a specific sedimentary sequence is unknown for other major igneous provinces.

The Dinodrill core should show δ³⁴S, δ¹⁸O, and clumped isotope evidence for sulfate aerosols and cooling with simultaneous paleosol and stomatal evidence of doubling of pCO₂, with cold overwhelming the warming, along with epsilon Nd, PGE, and other evidences of ash. Although the detailed chronology and environmental setting is already known from geotechnical cores, in these the critical interval is metamorphosed by a local CAMP intrusion, making the existing materials unsuitable for geochemistry and paleobotany. Thus, the new Dinodrill core is required in a setting lacking intrusions.

The proposed drill site, Dinosaur State Park, famously hosts a spectacular in situ display of hundreds of footprints of large theropod dinosaurs, new to the Pangean low latitudes – exemplars of the low-diversity communities of the ETE. The proto-feather insulated dinosaurs survived and flourished because they were accidentally preadapted to volcanic winter cold, while all large non-dinosaurian reptile competitors were extirpated. Dinodrill will address the mechanism for dinosaurian success and the establishment of not only Jurassic communities, but also the foundations of the modern world.