The massive weathering of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Provinces reconstructed from marine osmium isotopic ratio records

It is widely recognized that one of the main cause of the end-Triassic Mass Extinction (~201.4 Ma) was the formation of one of the Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs), the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). CAMP consists of extrusive and intrusive rocks, mainly basalt, but most of the extrusive rocks is not present today. This is interpreted as a result of the rapid weathering of the extrusive rocks. However, temporal constraints of the weathering events have not been well-established yet, leaving the linkage with paleoenvironmental changes unclear. Osmium isotopic ratio (¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os) in the ocean is one of the geochemical proxies to reconstruct the past activities of LIPs. The osmium isotopic ratio reflects the relative contribution from three sources: upper continental crust (¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os=~1.3), extraterrestrial material (~0.13), and mantle (~0.13). Therefore, the rapid weathering of the CAMP extrusive rocks, which are mantle-derived, is expected to have decreased the marine osmium isotopic ratio. In this study, we aimed to clarify the relationship between the igneous activity caused by the CAMP formation and the fluctuations in the marine osmium isotopic ratio by examining the changes in osmium isotopic ratio of Panthalassa at the end-Triassic. In this study, we investigated the Miyanoura Section located in Shikoku, southwest Japan. This section is a bedded cherts sequence in the southern Chichibu Belt. The age of sediment was roughly estimated as Upper Triassic based on radiolarian biostratigraphy, although the radiolarian tests are poorly preserved. Measurements of osmium concentration, rhenium (Re) concentration, and Os isotopic ratio were performed. The initial osmium isotopic ratio (¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os_i) was determined by age correction of 200 Ma for the bedded chert in the Miyanoura section. The results revealed a significant decrease in the marine Os isotopic ratio over approximately 100,000 years at the end-Triassic. The onset of this decrease coincides with a negative isotopic excursion of total organic carbon, which is correlated to the widely recognized Initial Carbon Isotope Excursion (ICIE), one of the characteristic changes in the end-Triassic, and also overlaps with the formation period of the CAMP. This suggests that the decrease in the marine Os isotopic ratio during this period was caused by the massive and rapid weathering of the CAMP extrusive rocks. In this presentation, I will introduce a quantitative evaluation using a simple box model and further discuss the paleoenvironmental changes that triggered this weathering event.