Dinosaurs were geo-engineers who changed carbon storage of sediments
Tom Goreau
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 15 September 2025
Dinosaur extinction can explain continental facies shifts at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary
- Lucas N. Weaver,
- Thomas S. Tobin,
- Courtney J. Sprain,
- Paige K. Wilson Deibel,
- Vera A. Korasidis,
- Mónica R. Carvalho,
- Pim Kaskes &
- Isabel M. Fendley
Communications Earth & Environment volume 6, Article number: 712 (2025)
Abstract
Continental Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary sections are best known from North America, where they invariably exhibit a marked shift in sedimentary facies at or very near the boundary level. Uppermost Cretaceous strata typically reflect water-logged soils and unstable meandering-river deposits, whereas lowermost Paleogene strata typically reflect coal swamps and broad, stable meander-belt deposits. Causal links between facies shifts at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and the end-Cretaceous mass extinction have been largely dismissed. Here, we present five new Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary sections identified via iridium anomalies in the Bighorn and Williston basins and assess the sedimentological changes that occur at North American Cretaceous-Paleogene boundaries. We hypothesize that the geographically widespread Cretaceous–Paleogene facies shifts were driven by the extinction of dinosaur megafauna. Large-bodied dinosaurs likely promoted open vegetation structure, prompting fluvial avulsion and clastic sediment input to distal floodplains. After the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, dense forests could establish, stabilizing meander belts and starving the floodplain of clastic sediment, favoring the accumulation of organic-rich strata. More empirical data are needed, but facies change in continental Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary sections suggests dinosaurs were ecosystem engineers that promoted habitat openness in the Late Cretaceous, and their extinction likely led to a dramatic reorganization of ecosystem structure in the earliest Paleogene.
Jellyfishpoetry
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Tom Goreau
Most human geo-engineering is unwitting too, we just call it civil engineering, land degradation, pollution, or extinction.
Michael Pilarski
Probably the biggest human geoengineering is called agriculture.
Closer to our human time scale,
The extinction of megafauna, including mastodons, occurred primarily during the Late Pleistocene epoch, with most species disappearing between roughly 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. These extinctions dramatically altered global vegetation by shifting landscapes from open, mixed woodlands to more uniform and dense forests.
Jme Conway
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Tom Goreau
Thanks Mike! Agriculture caused near complete deforestation and wildlife extinction of Europe, Asia, and North America, we’ve lost about half the biomass on earth, and the surviving living remnants weigh less than the concrete, asphalt, sand, and gravel that we have dumped over its dead soils.
Until now almost all geo-engineering has been degenerative, and everybody did it without thinking. it is strange now that efforts to undo their damage are criticized for being regenerative geoengineering, the kind we now desperately need.
We ecosystem regenerators are used to this sort of bizarre criticism all the time, being blamed for the problems we are solving. They tell us “you shouldn’t show people that you can grow trees faster by reminineralizing the soil and planting fruit trees, because you will just encourage them to burn more forest down, and you shouldn’t grow corals faster and stronger because then you are telling people it is OK to dredge them”. In other words, those who caused the problem by raping the planet are blaming those who provide the solutions for monkeying around with Mother Nature rather than helping her heal and repair the near fatal wounds of violent attacking mobs.
Everybody IS a geoengineer, but almost all are the wrong kind: degenerative and not regenerative. All the fancy technology we have developed increases the energy-intensive extractive economy that is killing the planet. Notice how AI is leading to gambling on frackgas power plants without CO2 recycling and nuclear power plants without nuclear waste recycling (my father was killed by radiation exposure at Bikini Atoll).
When the AI bubble pops, who will clean the mess it leaves behind? Those whose jobs it destroyed?
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Biorock Technology Inc., Blue Regeneration SL
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Phone: (1) 857-523-0807 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
On the Nature of Things: The Scientific Photography of Fritz Goro
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
“The Earth is not dying, she is being killed” U. Utah Phillips
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies” Noam Chomsky