Phosphorus availability on the early Earth and the impacts of life

CR Walton, S Ewens, JD Coates, RE Blake… - Nature …, 2023‏ - nature.com
Phosphorus (P) is critical to modern biochemical functions and can control ecosystem
growth. It was presumably important as a reagent in prebiotic chemistry. However, on the …

The geologic history of primary productivity

PW Crockford, YMB On, LM Ward, R Milo, I Halevy - Current Biology, 2023‏ - cell.com
The rate of primary productivity is a keystone variable in driving biogeochemical cycles
today and has been throughout Earth's past. 1 For example, it plays a critical role in …

[HTML][HTML] Timing the evolution of phosphorus-cycling enzymes through geological time using phylogenomics

JS Boden, J Zhong, RE Anderson… - Nature …, 2024‏ - nature.com
Phosphorus plays a crucial role in controlling biological productivity, but geological
estimates of phosphate concentrations in the Precambrian ocean, during life's origin and …

The early Earth as an analogue for exoplanetary biogeochemistry

EE Stüeken, SL Olson, E Moore… - … in Mineralogy and …, 2024‏ - pubs.geoscienceworld.org
Planet Earth has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years from an entirely anoxic planet with
possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics …

Nanoparticulate apatite and greenalite in oldest, well-preserved hydrothermal vent precipitates

B Rasmussen, JR Muhling, NJ Tosca - Science Advances, 2024‏ - science.org
Paleoarchean jaspilites are used to track ancient ocean chemistry and photoautotrophy
because they contain hematite interpreted to have formed following biological oxidation of …

[HTML][HTML] Refining the carbonate-associated iodine redox proxy with leaching experiments

K Zhang, G Tarbuck, GA Shields - Chemical Geology, 2024‏ - Elsevier
Iodate ions can substitute for carbonate in crystal lattices, which is why carbonate-
associated iodine (CAI) is increasingly being used to track redox-sensitive iodine species …

Isotopic Constraints on the Nature of Primary Precipitates in Archean–Early Paleoproterozoic Iron Formations from Determinations of the Iron Phonon Density of States …

AW Heard, N Dauphas, IL Hinz… - ACS Earth and Space …, 2023‏ - ACS Publications
Iron formations (IFs) are chemical sedimentary rocks that were widely deposited before the
Great Oxidation Event (GOE) around 2.4–2.2 Ga. It is generally thought that IFs precipitated …

Elevated phosphorus concentrations in shallow oceans as a trigger for the 1.57‐Ga oxygenation event

B **e, Z Zhang, C Li, MS Dodd, X Shi… - Geophysical …, 2024‏ - Wiley Online Library
Enhanced continental phosphorus (P) input into the oceans has been proposed as a
potential trigger for the 1.57 Ga oxygenation event; however, uncertainty remains due to the …

EONS: A new biogeochemical model of Earth's oxygen, carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen systems from the Archean to the present

JE Horne, C Goldblatt - Geochemistry, Geophysics …, 2024‏ - Wiley Online Library
Abstract We present Earth's Oxygenation and Natural Systematics (EONS): a new, fully
coupled biogeochemical model of the atmosphere, ocean, and their interactions with the …

Questioning the paradigm of a phosphate‐limited Archean biosphere

P Crockford, I Halevy - Geophysical research letters, 2022‏ - Wiley Online Library
The nature of Archean life remains one of the most contested topics in the study of Earth
history. The debate may be formulated as follows: When did present day metabolisms …