Marine phosphorus and atmospheric oxygen were coupled during the Great Oxidation Event

Abstract

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) represents a major increase in atmospheric O₂ concentration between ca. 2430 and 2060 million years ago, culminating in the permanent shift to an oxygenated atmosphere. It’s causes remain debated. Here we use the carbonate-associated phosphate (CAP) proxy to reconstruct oceanic phosphorus concentrations during the GOE from globally distributed sedimentary rocks. We find that the CAP and the inorganic carbon isotope composition of marine sediments co-varied during the GOE, suggesting synchronous fluctuations in marine phosphorus, biological productivity, and atmospheric O₂. Biogeochemical modelling shows that transient increases in P bioavailability can raise oxygenic primary production and organic carbon burial, yielding isotopically heavy seawater inorganic carbon and reproducing the observed patterns. Consequently, geochemical and modelling data together suggest that P availability was a likely contributor to the rapid oxygenation of Earth during the GOE.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Dodd, M.S. Li, C. Gu, H. Zhang, Z. Hou, M. Sadekov, A. Rosière, C.A. Pirajno, F. Alcott, L. Ossa, F.O. Mills, B.J.W. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-0931 Bekker, A.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2025, modified publication 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: 8 September 2025 Published (online): 15 October 2025 Published: 15 October 2025
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds)
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2026 10:09
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2026 10:09
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-025-64194-4
Related URLs:	Author Dataset
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Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:242044