Sustained increases in atmospheric oxygen and marine productivity in the Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic eras
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A geologically rapid Neoproterozoic oxygenation event is commonly linked to the appearance of marine animal groups in the fossil record. However, there is still debate about what evidence from the sedimentary geochemical record—if any—provides strong support for a persistent shift in surface oxygen immediately preceding the rise of animals. We present statistical learning analyses of a large dataset of geochemical data and associated geological context from the Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic sedimentary record and then use Earth system modelling to link trends in redox-sensitive trace metal and organic carbon concentrations to the oxygenation of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. We do not find evidence for the wholesale oxygenation of Earth’s oceans in the late Neoproterozoic era. We do, however, reconstruct a moderate long-term increase in atmospheric oxygen and marine productivity. These changes to the Earth system would have increased dissolved oxygen and food supply in shallow-water habitats during the broad interval of geologic time in which the major animal groups first radiated. This approach provides some of the most direct evidence for potential physiological drivers of the Cambrian radiation, while highlighting the importance of later Palaeozoic oxygenation in the evolution of the modern Earth system.
Originalsprog | Engelsk |
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Tidsskrift | Nature Geoscience |
Vol/bind | 17 |
Udgave nummer | 7 |
Sider (fra-til) | 667-674 |
Antal sider | 8 |
ISSN | 1752-0894 |
DOI | |
Status | Udgivet - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
We thank A.-S. Ahm, W. Chan, M. Clarkson, K. Doyle, J. Dumoulin, T. Fraser, J. Husson, B. Johnson, F. Kurzweil, A. Lenz, X. Lu, Y. Liu, A. Miller, P. Petrov, S. Richoz, P. Sack, C. Scott, S. Slotznick, S. Spinks, S. Tecklenburg, D. Thompson, H. Wang, L. Xang and J. Wang for their contribution to the Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoevironments Project dataset used in this study. We thank A. Ridgwell and A. Pohl for helpful discussions. A.J.M.J. publishes with permission of the Senior Executive Director, Northern Territory Geological Survey. We thank Stanford University, the Stanford Research Computing Center, the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility and associated High Performance Computing support services at the University of Southampton for providing computational resources and support during this research. This research and the SGP are funded by NSF grants EAR-1922966 and EAR-2143164 to E.A.S. We further thank the donors of The American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research (61017-ND2).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
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