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The end-Triassic mass extinction is one of the five most catastrophic in Phanerozoic Earth history. Here we report carbon isotope evidence of a pronounced productivity collapse at the boundary, coincident with a sudden extinction among marine plankton, from stratigraphic sections on the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada. This signal is similar to (though smaller than) the carbon isotope excursions associated with the Permian-Triassic and Cretaceous-Tertiary events.

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Severe changes in ocean redox, nutrient cycling, and marine productivity accompanied most Phanerozoic mass extinctions. However, evidence for marine photic zone euxinia (PZE) as a globally important extinction mechanism for the end-Triassic extinction (ETE) is currently lacking. Fossil molecular (biomarker) and nitrogen isotopic records from a sedimentary sequence in western Canada provide the first conclusive evidence of PZE and disrupted biogeochemistry in neritic waters of the Panthalassic Ocean during the end Triassic. Increasing water-column stratification and deoxygenation across the ETE led to PZE in the Early Jurassic, paralleled by a perturbed nitrogen cycle and ecological turnovers among noncalcifying groups, including eukaryotic algae and prokaryotic plankton. If such conditions developed widely in the Panthalassic Ocean, PZE might have been a potent mechanism for the ETE.