Synchrony between the Central Atlantic magmatic province and the Triassic-Jurassic mass-extinction event?

We present new data and a synthesis of cyclostratigraphic, lithostratigraphic, biostratigraphic, and published magnetostratigraphic and basalt geochemical data from eastern North America and Morocco in an attempt to clarify the temporal relationship between the Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction (∼ 202 Ma) and Earth's largest sequence of continental flood basalts, the Central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP). Newly discovered zones of reverse polarity within CAMP flow sequences of Morocco have been hypothesized by Marzoli et al. [Marzoli, A., Bertrand, H., Knight, K.B., Cirilli, S., Buratti, N., Vérati, C., Nomade, S., Renne, P.R., Youbi, N., Martini, R., Allenbach, K., Neuwerth, R., Rapaille, C., Zaninetti, L., Bellieni, G., 2004. Synchrony of the Central Atlantic magmatic province and the Triassic–Jurassic boundary climatic and biotic crisis. Geology 32, 973–976.] and Knight et al. [Knight, K.B., Nomade, S., Renne, P.R., Marzoli, A., Betrand, H., Youbi, N., 2004. The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary: paleomagnetic and 40Ar/30Ar evidence from Morocco for brief, episodic volcanism. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 228, 143–160.] as correlates of a very short, uppermost Triassic age reverse chron in the Newark basin, thus suggesting that much of the Moroccan CAMP was synchronous with or predates the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Here, however, we explain these apparent reverse polarity zones as possible correlatives of poorly sampled lower Jurassic basalt flow sequences and overlying strata in eastern North America and lower Jurassic reverse polarity sequences recognized by others in the Paris basin. A revised Milankovitch cyclostratigraphy based on new core and field data constrains the duration of eastern North America basaltic flows to ∼ 610 ky after the Triassic–Jurassic palynological turnover event. Palynological data indicates correlation of the initial carbon isotopic excursion of Hesselbo et al. [Hesselbo, S.P., Robinson, S.A., Surlyk, F., Piasecki, S., 2002. Terrestrial and marine extinction at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary synchronized with major carbon-cycle perturbation: a link to initiation of massive volcanism. Geology 30, 251–254.] at St. Audrie's Bay to the palynological turnover event and vertebrate extinction level in eastern North America, suggesting a revised magnetostratigraphic correlation and robust carbon isotopic tests of the Marzoli–Knight hypothesis. We conclude that as yet there are no compelling data showing that any of the CAMP predated or was synchronous with the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event

Synchrony between the Central Atlantic magmatic province and the Triassic-Jurassic mass-extinction event? Reply to Marzoli et al.

We are very pleased with the attention, long overdue, that the Triassic–Jurassic boundary and associated events, such as the CAMP, are receiving. This can only lead to greater specificity of hypotheses and greater understanding in the long run, and it is worth emphasizing some broad areas of agreement. Marzoli et al. (2008-this volume) points out the closeness in time of CAMP and Tr–J extinctions, and on this we all agree. We also agree that the systematic differences among different isotopic systems used for dating is a challenge to determining the relative timing of events dated with different techniques. This problem, however, seem to be fading as high-precision single-crystal U–Pb dates (206Pb/238U) are available from a variety of tuffs interbedded with marine strata as well as the North Mountain Basalt of Nova Scotia, which lies above the palynological Triassic–Jurassic extinction event in Nova Scotia. Schoene et al. (2006) obtained an age of 201.27 ± 0.03 Ma from this basalt, which is very close to an age of 201.5 Ma for a tuff 1 m above the last local occurrence of the topmost Triassic guide-fossil, the ammonite Choristoceras in a marine section in Peru (Schaltegger et al., 2007), presumably very close to the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. Schaltegger et al. (2007) also obtained an age of 199.5 Ma for the Hettangian–Sinemurian boundary from the latter section. Consistent with these ages, Pálfy and Mundil (2006) obtained ages of 200.6 ± 0.3 Ma for an ash layer in ammonite-bearing Middle Hettangian marine sediments in, Alaska, and 198.0 ± 0.6 Ma for a tuff layer in Early Sinemurian sediments in Hungary. These dates are not compatible with the multi-crystal age for the Triassic–Jurassic boundary of 199.6 ± 0.3 Ma of Pálfy and Mundil (2006), a fact recognized by Pálfy and Mundil (2006). Thus, we are in complete agreement that the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event is extremely close in time to the onset of the CAMP. The question is, "are any of the known flows of the CAMP actually at or before this extinction event?". That is the key issue dealt with by Whiteside et al. (2007), and it is a possibility that we recognize as completely plausible, but not yet demonstrated. It is in that spirit of general agreement that we reply to Marzoli et al.'s, comment. We note, however, that their comment touches on far too many points to adequately address in this reply, and we chose to focus our response on their most substantive issues, recalling that our paper was focusing on the testable aspects of their overall hypothesis. We deal with their criticisms in the order they present them

Climatically driven biogeographic provinces of Late Triassic tropical Pangea

Although continents were coalesced into the single landmass Pangea, Late Triassic terrestrial tetrapod assemblages are surprisingly provincial. In eastern North America, we show that assemblages dominated by traversodont cynodonts are restricted to a humid 6° equatorial swath that persisted for over 20 million years characterized by "semiprecessional" (approximately 10,000-y) climatic fluctuations reflected in stable carbon isotopes and sedimentary facies in lacustrine strata. More arid regions from 5-20°N preserve procolophonid-dominated faunal assemblages associated with a much stronger expression of approximately 20,000-y climatic cycles. In the absence of geographic barriers, we hypothesize that these variations in the climatic expression of astronomical forcing produced latitudinal climatic zones that sorted terrestrial vertebrate taxa, perhaps by excretory physiology, into distinct biogeographic provinces tracking latitude, not geographic position, as the proto-North American plate translated northward. Although the early Mesozoic is usually assumed to be characterized by globally distributed land animal communities due to of a lack of geographic barriers, strong provinciality was actually the norm, and nearly global communities were present only after times of massive ecological disruptions

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/palae

Mapping solar system chaos with the Geological Orrery

The Geological Orrery is a network of geological records of orbitally paced climate designed to address the inherent limitations of solutions for planetary orbits beyond 60 million years ago due to the chaotic nature of Solar System motion. We use results from two scientific coring experiments in Early Mesozoic continental strata: the Newark Basin Coring Project and the Colorado Plateau Coring Project. We precisely and accurately resolve the secular fundamental frequencies of precession of perihelion of the inner planets and Jupiter for the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic epochs (223–199 million years ago) using the lacustrine record of orbital pacing tuned only to one frequency (1/405,000 years) as a geological interferometer. Ex- cepting Jupiter’s, these frequencies differ significantly from present values as determined using three independent techniques yielding practically the same results. Estimates for the precession of perihe- lion of the inner planets are robust, reflecting a zircon U–Pb-based age model and internal checks based on the overdetermined origins of the geologically measured frequencies. Furthermore, although not indicative of a correct solution, one numerical solution closely matches the Geological Orrery, with a very low probability of being due to chance. To determine the secular fundamental frequencies of the precession of the nodes of the planets and the important secular resonances with the precession of perihelion, a contemporaneous high-latitude geological archive recording obliquity pacing of climate is needed. These results form a proof of concept of the Geological Orrery and lay out an empirical framework to map the chaotic evo- lution of the Solar System

A View from the Past Into our Collective Future: The Oncofertility Consortium Vision Statement

Today, male and female adult and pediatric cancer patients, individuals transitioning between gender identities, and other individuals facing health extending but fertility limiting treatments can look forward to a fertile future. This is, in part, due to the work of members associated with the Oncofertility Consortium. The Oncofertility Consortium is an international, interdisciplinary initiative originally designed to explore the urgent unmet need associated with the reproductive future of cancer survivors. As the strategies for fertility management were invented, developed or applied, the individuals for who the program offered hope, similarly expanded. As a community of practice, Consortium participants share information in an open and rapid manner to addresses the complex health care and quality-of-life issues of cancer, transgender and other patients. To ensure that the organization remains contemporary to the needs of the community, the field designed a fully inclusive mechanism for strategic planning and here present the findings of this process. This interprofessional network of medical specialists, scientists, and scholars in the law, medical ethics, religious studies and other disciplines associated with human interventions, explore the relationships between health, disease, survivorship, treatment, gender and reproductive longevity. The goals are to continually integrate the best science in the service of the needs of patients and build a community of care that is ready for the challenges of the field in the future

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival