Gernon, T.M., Mills, B.J.W. orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931, Hincks, T.K. et al. (4 more authors) (2024) Solid Earth forcing of Mesozoic oceanic anoxic events. Nature Geoscience, 17. pp. 926-935. ISSN 1752-0894
Abstract
Oceanic anoxic events are geologically abrupt phases of extreme oxygen depletion in the oceans that disrupted marine ecosystems and brought about evolutionary turnover. Typically lasting ~1.5 million years, these events occurred frequently during the Mesozoic era, from about 183 to 85 million years ago, an interval associated with continental breakup and widespread large igneous province volcanism. One hypothesis suggests that anoxic events resulted from enhanced chemical weathering of Earth’s surface in a greenhouse world shaped by high volcanic carbon outgassing. Here we test this hypothesis using a combination of plate reconstructions, tectonic–geochemical analysis and global biogeochemical modelling. We show that enhanced weathering of mafic lithologies during continental breakup and nascent seafloor spreading can plausibly drive a succession of anoxic events. Weathering pulses collectively gave rise to substantial releases of the nutrient phosphorus to the oceans, stimulating biological primary production. This, in turn, enhanced organic carbon burial and caused widespread ocean deoxygenation on a scale sufficient to drive recurrent anoxia. This model complements volcanic outgassing-centred hypotheses for triggering these events by demonstrating well-quantified basaltic sources of phosphorus release during periods of intense weathering related to climate warmth. Our study highlights a close coupling between the solid Earth and biosphere during continental reorganization.
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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) 2024. 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, 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/X011208/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Jul 2024 12:41 |
Last Modified: | 19 Feb 2025 11:11 |
Published Version: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01496-0 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41561-024-01496-0 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:214054 |
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