Recurring marine phosphorus spikes during major palaeozoic mass extinctions and climate change

Abstract

Mass extinctions in the early Palaeozoic have been attributed to global climate change and ocean anoxia with elevated phosphorus (P) proposed as a key driver. However, this hypothesis has lacked geochemical support due to the absence of proxies that can reconstruct changes in marine P availability. Focusing on the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME) and the Late Devonian Mass Extinction (LDME), we present carbonate-associated phosphate (CAP) data from seven globally distributed sections, providing a proxy record for seawater P variation across these events. Our data reveal short-lived, globally coherent P pulses that coincided with both events. These transient P surges align with biodiversity loss, widespread anoxia, and seawater temperature declines, suggesting a link between P flux, ocean anoxia, and global climate shifts, as supported by biogeochemical model results. These findings provide an empirical connection between brief marine P pulses and ecological crises during the LOME and LDME.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Dodd, M.S. Li, C. Zhang, Z. Sadekov, A.Y. Desrochers, A. Hints, O. Yan, D. Yang, X. George, A.D. Elrick, M. White, D. Qie, W. Chen, B. Merdith, A.S. Mills, B.J.W. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2026. 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:	Accepted: 3 March 2026 Published (online): 24 March 2026 Published: 24 March 2026
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds)
Date Deposited:	29 May 2026 14:40
Last Modified:	29 May 2026 14:40
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-026-70701-y
Related URLs:	PubMed URL Dataset Dataset
Sustainable Development Goals:
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:241473