A volcanic trigger for the Late Ordovician mass extinction? Mercury data from south China and Laurentia

The Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), one of the five largest Phanerozoic biodiversity depletions, occurred in two pulses associated with the expansion and contraction of ice sheets on Gondwana during the Hirnantian Age. It is widely recognized that environmental disruptions associated with changing glacial conditions contributed to the extinctions, but neither the kill mechanisms nor the causes of glacial expansion are well understood....