Biogeographic control of trilobite mass extinction at an Upper Cambrian “biomere” boundary

Abstract

Extinctions at the top of the Sunwaptan Stage (=“Ptychaspid Biomere”) near the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary eliminated about half of North American trilobite families. The families that extend from the shelf into the upper slope show significantly higher survival than those confined to the shelf. Biofacies and lithofacies distribution patterns indicate that the extinctions cannot be attributed to a shelfwide physical environmental perturbation, such as a fall in water temperature or the spread of anoxic waters. We develop a simple biogeographic model which suggests that diversity of a faunal province is influenced profoundly by changes in the number of component biofacies. This model is tested with an analysis of biofacies distribution patterns across the upper boundary of the Sunwaptan Stage. The extinctions correspond closely to lithofacies shifts in the outer shelf that indicate the initiation of major paleogeographic changes, possibly in response to a sea-level rise. The effects of these changes cascade across the entire shelf by the shoreward migration of off-shelf and shelf-margin taxa. Biofacies become reduced in number through telescoping and their environmental ranges expand during the extinction interval, suggesting an increase in the proportion of eurytopic taxa. Selective survival of wide-ranging eurytopes may have influenced the dynamics of faunal replacement by lowering speciation rates of shelf taxa. Consequently, the proportion of shelf endemics will decline and biofacies will be dominated by immigrant taxa. There are sufficient similarities in extinction patterns across the upper boundary of the Sunwaptan Stage and those at other Upper Cambrian stage boundaries to suggest that the biogeographic model developed here may have broader application.