Benthic perspective on Earth's oldest evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis.

ABSTRACT: The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) is currently viewed as a protracted process during which atmospheric oxygen increased above ∼10(-5) times the present atmospheric level (PAL). This threshold represents an estimated upper limit for sulfur isotope mass-independent fractionation (S-MIF), an Archean signature of atmospheric anoxia that begins to disappear from the rock record at 2.45 Ga. However, an increasing number of papers have suggested that the timing for oxidative continental weathering, and by conventional thinking the onset of atmospheric oxygenation, was hundreds of million years earlier than previously thought despite the presence of S-MIF. We suggest that this apparent discrepancy can be resolved by the earliest oxidative-weathering reactions occurring in benthic and soil environmen

SUBMITTER: Lalonde SV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4313849 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature