Abstract
Abstract. Chamberlin and Salisbury's assessment of the Permian a century ago captured the essence of the period: it is an interval of extremes yet one sufficiently recent to have affected a biosphere with near-modern complexity. The events of the Permian – the orogenic episodes, massive biospheric turnovers, both icehouse and greenhouse antitheses, and Mars-analog lithofacies – boggle the imagination and present us with great opportunities to explore Earth system behavior. The ICDP-funded workshops dubbed “Deep Dust,” held in Oklahoma (USA) in March 2019 (67 participants from nine countries) and Paris (France) in January 2020 (33 participants from eight countries), focused on clarifying the scientific drivers and key sites for coring continuous sections of Permian continental (loess, lacustrine, and associated) strata that preserve high-resolution records. Combined, the two workshops hosted a total of 91 participants representing 14 countries, with broad expertise. Discussions at Deep Dust 1.0 (USA) focused on the primary research questions of paleoclimate, paleoenvironments, and paleoecology of icehouse collapse and the run-up to the Great Dying and both the modern and Permian deep microbial biosphere. Auxiliary science topics included tectonics, induced seismicity, geothermal energy, and planetary science. Deep Dust 1.0 also addressed site selection as well as scientific approaches, logistical challenges, and broader impacts and included a mid-workshop field trip to view the Permian of Oklahoma. Deep Dust 2.0 focused specifically on honing the European target. The Anadarko Basin (Oklahoma) and Paris Basin (France) represent the most promising initial targets to capture complete or near-complete stratigraphic coverage through continental successions that serve as reference points for western and eastern equatorial Pangaea.
Highlights
The Permian (299–252 Ma) records a fundamental reorganization in tectonic, climatic, and biologic components of the Earth system
Plate collisions leading to the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea culminated by middle Permian time, expressed at low latitudes by the formation of the Central Pangaean Mountains and associated orogenic belts (e.g., Domeier and Torsvik, 2014; Fig. 1)
The late Paleozoic icehouse was the longest and most intense glaciation of the Phanerozoic (Feulner, 2017), and reconstructed atmospheric composition includes both the lowest CO2 and highest O2 levels of the Phanerozoic (Berner, 2006; Foster et al, 2017) – the latter presumably spurred by the massive proliferation of vascular land plants (Berner, 2003), possibly exacerbated by weathering of the tropical mountains (Goddéris, 2017) as well as enhanced marine productivity (Sur et al, 2015; Chen et al, 2018; Sardar Abadi et al, 2020)
Summary
The Permian (299–252 Ma) records a fundamental reorganization in tectonic, climatic, and biologic components of the Earth system. The dynamic Earth system of the Permian and the sensitivity of the tropics to climate forcings in particular motivate an international drilling program to focus on recovery of high-resolution continental records from both western and eastern low-latitude Pangaea in addition to auxiliary science objectives. Following discussions of science objectives and geology of potential sites, participants took a field excursion to view target Permian strata of the Anadarko Basin, which consist predominantly of very fine-grained red beds and evaporites, with discussions focused on interpretations of the predominance of eolian and lacustrine environments Géologiques et Miniéres) and CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) regarding a proposed research coring project
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