Qiu, Z, Zou, C, Mills, BJW orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931 et al. (6 more authors) (2022) A nutrient control on expanded anoxia and global cooling during the Late Ordovician mass extinction. Communications Earth & Environment, 3. 82. ISSN 2662-4435
Abstract
Expanded ocean anoxia and global cooling have been invoked as major causal mechanisms for the Late Ordovician mass extinction, but the factors underpinning the extinction remain unresolved. Here, we document two intervals of particularly intense phosphorus recycling in marine rocks deposited across a bathymetric transect in the Yangtze Shelf Sea. The first occurred during the initial phase of the extinction and, coincident with global cooling, drove the development of ocean euxinia on the shelf. The second re-established shelf euxinia after the peak of glaciation, leading to the second phase of extinction. Integration of these data into a global biogeochemical model indicates that phosphorus recycling would have doubled the long-term burial rate of organic carbon, driving ~4°C of global cooling. Thus, through its impact on both the spread of anoxia and global cooling, extensive redox-promoted phosphorus recycling was a critical factor in Earth’s first catastrophic loss of animal life.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. 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: |
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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 (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S009663/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/R010129/1 Royal Society WM150108 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Mar 2022 11:52 |
Last Modified: | 01 Jun 2022 12:56 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s43247-022-00412-x |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:184620 |