Fully oxygenated water columns over continental shelves before the Great Oxidation Event
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Late Archaean sedimentary rocks contain compelling geochemical evidence for episodic accumulation of dissolved oxygen in the oceans along continental margins before the Great Oxidation Event. However, the extent of this oxygenation remains poorly constrained. Here we present thallium and molybdenum isotope compositions for anoxic organic-rich shales of the 2.5 billion-year-old Mount McRae Shale from Western Australia, which previously yielded geochemical evidence of a transient oxygenation event. During this event, we observe an anti-correlation between thalium and molybdenum isotope data, including two shifts to higher molybdenum and lower thalium isotope compositions. Our data indicate pronounced burial of manganese oxides in sediments elsewhere in the ocean at these times, which requires that water columns above portions of the ocean floor were fully oxygenated: all the way from the air-sea interface to well below the sediment-water interface. Well-oxygenated continental shelves were likely the most important sites of manganese oxide burial and mass-balance modeling results suggest that fully oxygenated water columns were at least a regional-scale feature of early-Earth's oceans 2.5 billion years ago.
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Stable thallium isotopes in the Mt. McRae Shale suggest burial of oxidized manganese in shallow-ocean sediments at approximately 2.5 Gya, consistent with stable isotopic, trace element, and radiogenic isotope data suggesting transient but possibly significant accumulations of surface O2 in the late Archean Earth system.
“Observations from stable thallium isotopes in the Mt.McRae Shale suggest burial of oxidized manganese in shallowocean sediments at ∼2.5 Gya (Ostrander et al. 2019), consistent with a range of stable isotopic, trace element, and radiogenic isotope data suggesting transient but possibly significant accumulations of surface O 2 in the late Archean Earth system (Anbar et al. 2007, Kendall et al. 2015a”
From The History of Ocean Oxygenation (2022) · cites this paper as Ostrander et al. 2019
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- Authors
- Ostrander, C. M., Nielsen, S. G., Owens, J. D., Kendall, B., Gordon, G. W., Romaniello, S. J., & Anbar, A. D.
- Affiliations
- Arizona State University (US)
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (US)
- Florida State University (US)
- University of Waterloo (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Ostrander, Chadlin M.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Geoscience
- Published
- 2019-02-25
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 186-191
- ISSN
- 1752-0894 (ISSN-L)
- 1752-0908
- PMC
- PMC6398953
- OpenAlex
- W2916957147
- Cited by
- 156
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 9
- FWCI
- 13.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2019-03-06)
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Geoscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- UWSpace (University of Waterloo) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX16AJ60G)
- Arizona State University
- Nature
- Division of Materials Research
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geochemistry and Petrology › Geochemistry and Elemental Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geophysics › Geological and Geochemical Analysis
- Keywords
- Great Oxidation Event, thallium isotopes, molybdenum isotopes, organic-rich shale, early Earth oceans, mass balance model, anoxic sediments
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