Overview

The quality of published K–T boundary terrestrial data diminishes dramatically outside of North America. Of the 20 non-North American K–T boundary sections, only one scored as much as 10 points on Table 2.1. Our evaluation of these sections begins with the 14 localities known from Eurasia, which we subdivide based on the data available into Europe, Japan, China, and the Russian Far East. Each of these regions is discussed in its own section in this chapter.

Two of the first three places in the world where an iridium anomaly was found at the K–T boundary are in Europe. However, detailed paleobotanical and palynological records of the event are absent at those localities because the boundary occurs in marine rocks. The microfossils that record extinction at the K–T boundary in those places are marine foraminifera, and although they provide an excellent fossil record of the event, they reveal nothing about land plants and the boundary. There are some nonmarine rocks spanning the boundary in Europe, however, and we review the published records from those areas. Abundant nonmarine rock sequences are to be found in Asia, especially in northeast China and the Russian Far East, and extensive literature is available. We have supplemented the Asian literature with our own field work.

A comparison of palynomorph assemblages from Upper Cretaceous and lower Paleogene intervals in western Europe, northwest Africa, and southeast China by Song and Huang (1997) provides an overview of the distribution of plants in those areas at that time, based on palynological records published through 1996 (see also Chapter 5).