The DOI matches its Crossref record; 79 of the 79 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth: A climate disaster triggered by the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis
Open accessAbstract
Although biomarker, trace element, and isotopic evidence have been used to claim that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved by 2.8 giga-annum before present (Ga) and perhaps as early as 3.7 Ga, a skeptical examination raises considerable doubt about the presence of oxygen producers at these times. Geological features suggestive of oxygen, such as red beds, lateritic paleosols, and the return of sedimentary sulfate deposits after a approximately 900-million year hiatus, occur shortly before the approximately 2.3-2.2 Ga Makganyene "snowball Earth" (global glaciation). The massive deposition of Mn, which has a high redox potential, practically requires the presence of environmental oxygen after the snowball. New age constraints from the Transvaal Supergroup of South Africa suggest that all three glaciations in the Huronian Supergroup of Canada predate the Snowball event. A simple cyanobacterial growth model incorporating the range of C, Fe, and P fluxes expected during a partial glaciation in an anoxic world with high-Fe oceans indicates that oxygenic photosynthesis could have destroyed a methane greenhouse and triggered a snowball event on time-scales as short as 1 million years. As the geological evidence requiring oxygen does not appear during the Pongola glaciation at 2.9 Ga or during the Huronian glaciations, we argue that oxygenic cyanobacteria evolved and radiated shortly before the Makganyene snowball.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“In addition, the relative timing of the GOE and the Snowball Earth glaciation represented by the Makganyene diamictite in the Griqualand West Basin in South Africa (56) also remains uncertain.”
From Rapid oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.33 billion years ago (2016) · cites this paper as [56]
In the citing paper
“Multiple layers of diamictite have been observed in Canada (Huronian Supergroup), South Africa (Transvaal Supergroup), and Australia (Turee Creek Group), suggesting that a series of glaciations took place between 2.45 and 2.2 Ga (56, 64), the timeframe in which the GOE also occurred.”
From Rapid oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.33 billion years ago (2016) · cites this paper as [56]
In the citing paper
“Because CH4 is a strong greenhouse gas, the substantial decrease of pCH4 could have led to the Paleoproterozoic “Snowball Earth” glaciation (56, 65).”
From Rapid oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.33 billion years ago (2016) · cites this paper as [56]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A marine microbial consortium apparently mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane
Boëtius, A., Ravenschlag, K., Schubert, C. J., Rickert, D., Widdel, F., Gieseke, A., Amann, R., Jørgensen, B. B., Witte, U. F. M., & Pfannkuche, O. (2000) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35036572 · Cited by 3,121
Berner, R. A., Lasaga, A. C., & Garrels, R. M. (1983) · American Journal of Science · doi:10.2475/ajs.283.7.641 · Cited by 2,428
A negative feedback mechanism for the long‐term stabilization of Earth's surface temperature
Walker, J. C. G., Hays, P. B., & Kasting, J. F. (1981) · Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans · doi:10.1029/jc086ic10p09776 · Cited by 2,310
Langmuir, D. (1978) · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta · doi:10.1016/0016-7037(78)90001-7 · Cited by 2,152
Atmospheric Influence of Earth's Earliest Sulfur Cycle
Farquhar, J., Bao, H., & Thiemens, M. (2000) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.289.5480.756 · Cited by 1,805
The Evolution of Modern Eukaryotic Phytoplankton
Falkowski, P. G., Katz, M. E., Knoll, A. H., Quigg, A., Raven, J. A., Schofield, O., & Taylor, F. J. R. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1095964 · Cited by 1,613
The snowball Earth hypothesis: testing the limits of global change
Hoffman, P. F., & Schrag, D. P. (2002) · Terra Nova · doi:10.1046/j.1365-3121.2002.00408.x · Cited by 1,585
Dating the rise of atmospheric oxygen
Bekker, A., Holland, H. D., Wang, P.-L., Rumble, D., Stein, H. J., Hannah, J. L., Coetzee, L. L., & Beukes, N. J. (2004) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature02260 · Cited by 1,435
Microfossils of the early Archean apex chert: New evidence of the antiquity of life
Schopf, J. W. (1993) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.260.5108.640 · Cited by 1,363
The Geochemistry of Natural Waters: Surface and Groundwater Environments
Drever, J. I. (1997) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 1,292
Research works printed but not linked: 6
- Nhelko N. (2004) D.Phil. thesis (Rand Afrikaans University Johannesburg).
- Dorland H. (2004) D.Phil. thesis (Rand Afrikaans University Johannesburg).
- Young, G. M., Long, D. G. F., Fedo, C. M. & Nesbitt, H. W. (2001) Sediment. Geol. 141, 233–254.
- Föllmi, K. B. (1995) Geology 23, 503–506.
- Hayes, J. M. (1994) in Early Life on Earth, ed. Bengtson, S. (Columbia Univ. Press, New York), Vol. 84, pp. 220–236.
- Barnes, R. O. & Goldberg, E. D. (1976) Geology 4, 297–300.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Algae-bacteria interactions: Evolution, ecology and emerging applications
Ramanan, R., Kim, B.-H., Cho, D.-H., Oh, H.-M., & Kim, H.-S. (2016) · Biotechnology Advances · doi:10.1016/j.biotechadv.2015.12.003 · Cited by 1,301
A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?
Anbar, A. D., Duan, Y., Lyons, T. W., Arnold, G. L., Kendall, B., Creaser, R. A., Kaufman, A. J., Gordon, G. W., Scott, C., Garvin, J., et al. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1140325 · Cited by 1,024
The supercontinent cycle: A retrospective essay
Nance, R. D., Murphy, J. B., & Santosh, M. (2013) · Gondwana Research · doi:10.1016/j.gr.2012.12.026 · Cited by 771
The Neoproterozoic oxygenation event: Environmental perturbations and biogeochemical cycling
Och, L. M., & Shields-Zhou, G. A. (2012) · Earth-Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2011.09.004 · Cited by 646
Evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis half a billion years before the Great Oxidation Event
Planavsky, N. J., Asael, D., Hofmann, A., Reinhard, C. T., Lalonde, S. V., Knudsen, A., Wang, X., Ossa Ossa, F., Pecoits, E., Smith, A. J. B., et al. (2014) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/ngeo2122 · Cited by 615
Metadata
- Authors
- Kopp, R. E., Kirschvink, J. L., Hilburn, I. A., & Nash, C. Z.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2005-08
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 32
- Pages
- 11131-11136
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC1183582
- OpenAlex
- W2145815106
- Cited by
- 565
- References
- 79
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 35 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 25.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geochemistry and Petrology › Geological and Geochemical Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution
- Keywords
- Snowball Earth, oxygenic photosynthesis, cyanobacteria, Transvaal Supergroup, Huronian Supergroup, red beds, manganese deposition, global glaciation, anoxic oceans, Paleoproterozoic
- MeSH terms
- Cyanobacteria, Carbon, Climate, Biological Evolution, Fossils, Geology, Iron, Manganese, Models, Biological, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Photosynthesis, Sulfur, Time Factors, Triterpenes, Earth, Planet, Ice Cover, Geological Phenomena
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
