资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The oceans probably remained well-oxygenated for millions of years after the Palaeoproterozoic Lomagundi-Jatuli Event, according to high concentrations and isotope signatures of redox-sensitive metals in the 2-billion-year-old Zaonega Formation, Russia.

The approximately 2,220-2,060 million years old Lomagundi-Jatuli Event was the longest positive carbon isotope excursion in Earth history and is traditionally interpreted to reflect an increased organic carbon burial and a transient rise in atmospheric O-2. However, it is widely held that O-2 levels collapsed for more than a billion years after this. Here we show that black shales postdating the Lomagundi-Jatuli Event from the approximately 2,000 million years old Zaonega Formation contain the highest redox-sensitive trace metal concentrations reported in sediments deposited before the Neoproterozoic (maximum concentrations of Mo = 1,009 mu g g(-1), U = 238 mu g g(-1) and Re = 516 ng g(-1)). This unit also contains the most positive Precambrian shale U isotope values measured to date (maximum U-238/U-235 ratio of 0.79 parts per thousand), which provides novel evidence that there was a transition to modern-like biogeochemical cycling during the Palaeoproterozoic. Although these records do not preclude a return to anoxia during the Palaeoproterozoic, they uniquely suggest that the oceans remained well-oxygenated millions of years after the termination of the Lomagundi-Jatuli Event.