Archean phosphorus liberation induced by iron redox geochemistry

Abstract

The element phosphorus (P) is central to ecosystem growth and is proposed to be a limiting nutrient for life. The Archean ocean may have been strongly phosphorus-limited due to the selective binding of phosphate to iron oxyhydroxide. Here we report a new route to solubilizing phosphorus in the ancient oceans: reduction of phosphate to phosphite by iron(II) at low (<200 °C) diagenetic temperatures. Reduction of phosphate to phosphite was likely widespread in the Archean, as the reaction occurs rapidly and is demonstrated from thermochemical modeling, experimental analogs, and detection of phosphite in early Archean rocks. We further demonstrate that the higher solubility of phosphite compared to phosphate results in the liberation of phosphorus from ferruginous sediments. This phosphite is relatively stable after its formation, allowing its accumulation in the early oceans. As such, phosphorus, not as phosphate but as phosphite, could have been a major nutrient in early pre-oxygenated oceans.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Herschy, B Chang, SJ Blake, R Lepland, A Abbott-Lyon, H Sampson, J Atlas, Z Kee, TP https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2553-766X Pasek, MA
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 15 March 2018 Published (online): 9 April 2018 Published: 9 April 2018
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemistry (Leeds) > Inorganic Chemistry (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	22 Mar 2018 12:08
Last Modified:	25 Sep 2020 11:21
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-018-03835-3
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:128838

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Archean phosphorus liberation induced by iron redox geochemistry

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