Tostevin, R, Wood, RA, Shields, GA et al. (8 more authors) (2016) Low-oxygen waters limited habitable space for early animals. Nature Communications, 7. 12818.
Abstract
The oceans at the start of the Neoproterozoic Era (1,000–541 million years ago, Ma) were dominantly anoxic, but may have become progressively oxygenated, coincident with the rise of animal life. However, the control that oxygen exerted on the development of early animal ecosystems remains unclear, as previous research has focussed on the identification of fully anoxic or oxic conditions, rather than intermediate redox levels. Here we report anomalous cerium enrichments preserved in carbonate rocks across bathymetric basin transects from nine localities of the Nama Group, Namibia (~550–541 Ma). In combination with Fe-based redox proxies, these data suggest that low-oxygen conditions occurred in a narrow zone between well-oxygenated surface waters and fully anoxic deep waters. Although abundant in well-oxygenated environments, early skeletal animals did not occupy oxygen impoverished regions of the shelf, demonstrating that oxygen availability (probably >10 μM) was a key requirement for the development of early animal-based ecosystems.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016, The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC NE/I005862/2 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2016 11:15 |
Last Modified: | 05 Oct 2017 16:10 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12818 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/ncomms12818 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:105158 |