Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Sufficient oxygen for animal respiration 1,400 million years ago.

ABSTRACT: The Mesoproterozoic Eon [1,600-1,000 million years ago (Ma)] is emerging as a key interval in Earth history, with a unique geochemical history that might have influenced the course of biological evolution on Earth. Indeed, although this time interval is rather poorly understood, recent chromium isotope results suggest that atmospheric oxygen levels were <0.1% of present levels, sufficiently low to have inhibited the evolution of animal life. In contrast, using a different approach, we explore the distribution and enrichments of redox-sensitive trace metals in the 1,400 Ma sediments of Unit 3 of the Xiamaling Formation, North China Block. Patterns of trace metal enrichments reveal oxygenated bottom waters during deposition of the sediments, and biomarker results demonstrate the presence of green sulfur bacteria in the water column. Thus, we document an ancient oxygen minimum zone. We develop a simple, yet comprehensive, model of marine carbon-oxygen cycle dynamics to show that our geochemical results are consistent with atmospheric oxygen levels >4% of present-day levels. Therefore, in contrast to previous suggestions, we show that there was sufficient oxygen to fuel animal respiration long before the evolution of animals themselves.

SUBMITTER: Zhang S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4763753 | biostudies-other | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

Lizards ran bipedally 110 million years ago.

Project description:Four heteropod lizard trackways discovered in the Hasandong Formation (Aptian-early Albian), South Korea assigned to Sauripes hadongensis, n. ichnogen., n. ichnosp., which represents the oldest lizard tracks in the world. Most tracks are pes tracks (N?=?25) that are very small, average 22.29?mm long and 12.46?mm wide. The pes tracks show "typical" lizard morphology as having curved digit imprints that progressively increase in length from digits I to IV, a smaller digit V that is separated from the other digits by a large interdigital angle. The manus track is 19.18?mm long and 19.23?mm wide, and shows a different morphology from the pes. The predominant pes tracks, the long stride length of pes, narrow trackway width, digitigrade manus and pes prints, and anteriorly oriented long axis of the fourth pedal digit indicate that these trackways were made by lizards running bipedally, suggesting that bipedality was possible early in lizard evolution.

| S-EPMC5814403 | biostudies-literature

Aluminosilicate haloes preserve complex life approximately 800 million years ago.

Project description:Mudstone-hosted microfossils are a major component of the Proterozoic fossil record, particularly dominating the record of early eukaryotic life. Early organisms possessed no biomineralized parts to resist decay and controls on their fossilization in mudstones are poorly understood. Consequently, the Proterozoic fossil record is compromised-we do not know whether changing temporal/spatial patterns of microfossil occurrences reflect evolution or the distribution of favourable fossilization conditions. We investigated fossilization within the approximately 1000 Ma Lakhanda Group (Russia) and the approximately 800 Ma Svanbergfjellet and Wynniatt formations (Svalbard and Arctic Canada). Vertical sections of microfossils and surrounding matrices were extracted from thin sections by focused ion beam milling. Elemental mapping and synchrotron-based infrared microspectroscopy revealed that microfossils are surrounded by haloes rich in aluminium, probably hosted in kaolinite. Kaolinite has been implicated in Cambrian Burgess Shale-type (BST) fossilization and is known to slow the growth of degraders. The Neoproterozoic mudstone microfossil record may be biased to tropical settings conducive to kaolinite formation. These deposits lack metazoan fossils even though they share fossilization conditions with younger BST deposits that are capable of preserving non-mineralizing metazoans. Thus metazoans, at least those typically preserved in BST deposits, were probably absent from sedimentary environments before approximately 800 Ma.

| S-EPMC7333908 | biostudies-literature

Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago.

Project description:Rapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat diversification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago. Oldupai's earliest hominins sequentially inhabited the floodplains of sinuous channels, then river-influenced contexts, which now comprises the oldest palaeolake setting documented regionally. Early Oldowan tools reveal a homogenous technology to utilise diverse, rapidly changing environments that ranged from fern meadows to woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, to lakeside woodland/palm groves as well as hyper-xeric steppes. Hominins periodically used emerging landscapes and disturbance biomes multiple times over 235,000 years, thus predating by more than 180,000 years the earliest known hominins and Oldowan industries from the Eastern side of the basin.

| S-EPMC7791053 | biostudies-literature

Early Pleistocene obliquity-scale pCO2 variability at ~1.5 million years ago.

Project description:In the early Pleistocene, global temperature cycles predominantly varied with ~41-kyr (obliquity-scale) periodicity. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations likely played a role in these climate cycles; marine sediments provide an indirect geochemical means to estimate early Pleistocene CO2. Here we present a boron isotope-based record of continuous high-resolution surface ocean pH and inferred atmospheric CO2 changes. Our results show that, within a window of time in the early Pleistocene (1.38-1.54 Ma), pCO2 varied with obliquity, confirming that, analogous to late Pleistocene conditions, the carbon cycle and climate covaried at ~1.5 Ma. Pairing the reconstructed early Pleistocene pCO2 amplitude (92 ±13 ?atm) with a comparably smaller global surface temperature glacial/interglacial amplitude (3.0 ±0.5 K), yields a surface temperature change to CO2 radiative forcing ratio of S [CO2]~0.75 (± 0.5) °C/Wm-2, as compared to the late Pleistocene S [CO2] value of ~1.75 (± 0.6) °C/Wm-2. This direct comparison of pCO2 and temperature implicitly incorporates the large ice sheet forcing as an internal feedback and is not directly applicable to future warming. We evaluate this result with a simple climate model, and show that the presumably thinner, though extensive, northern hemisphere ice sheets would increase surface temperature sensitivity to radiative forcing. Thus, the mechanism to dampen actual temperature variability in the early Pleistocene more likely lies with Southern Ocean circulation dynamics or antiphase hemispheric forcing. We also compile this new carbon dioxide record with published Plio-Pleistocene ?11B records using consistent boundary conditions and explore potential reasons for the discrepancy between Pliocene pCO2 based on different planktic foraminifera.

| S-EPMC7380090 | biostudies-literature

Extensive marine-terminating ice sheets in Europe from 2.5 million years ago.

Project description:Geometries of Early Pleistocene [2.58 to 0.78 million years (Ma) ago] ice sheets in northwest Europe are poorly constrained but are required to improve our understanding of past ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere coupling. Ice sheets are believed to have changed in their response to orbital forcing, becoming, from about 1.2 Ma ago, volumetrically larger and longer-lived. We present a multiproxy data set for the North Sea, extending to over a kilometer below the present-day seafloor, which demonstrates spatially extensive glaciation of the basin from the earliest Pleistocene. Ice sheets repeatedly entered the North Sea, south of 60°N, in water depths of up to ~250 m from 2.53 Ma ago and subsequently grounded in the center of the basin, in deeper water, from 1.87 Ma ago. Despite lower global ice volumes, these ice sheets were near comparable in spatial extent to those of the Middle and Late Pleistocene but possibly thinner and moving over slippery (low basal resistance) beds.

| S-EPMC6007157 | biostudies-literature

Burrowing hard corals occurring on the sea floor since 80 million years ago.

Project description:We describe a previously unknown niche for hard corals in the small, bowl-shaped, solitary scleractinian, Deltocyathoides orientalis (Family Turbinoliidae), on soft-bottom substrates. Observational experiments were used to clarify how the sea floor niche is exploited by turbinoliids. Deltocyathoides orientalis is adapted to an infaunal mode of life and exhibits behaviours associated with automobility that include burrowing into sediments, vertical movement through sediments to escape burial, and recovery of an upright position after being overturned. These behaviours were achieved through repeated expansion and contraction of their peripheral soft tissues, which constitute a unique muscle-membrane system. Histological analysis showed that these muscle arrangements were associated with deeply incised inter-costal spaces characteristic of turbinoliid corals. The oldest known turbinoliid, Bothrophoria ornata, which occurred in the Cretaceous (Campanian), also possessed a small, conical skeleton with highly developed costae. An infaunal mode of life became available to turbinoliids due to the acquisition of automobility through the muscle-membrane system at least 80 million years ago. The newly discovered active burrowing strategies described herein provide new insights into the use of an unattached mode of life by corals inhabiting soft-bottom substrates throughout the Phanerozoic.

| S-EPMC4830954 | biostudies-literature

Atmospheric composition 1 million years ago from blue ice in the Allan Hills, Antarctica.

Project description:Here, we present direct measurements of atmospheric composition and Antarctic climate from the mid-Pleistocene (?1 Ma) from ice cores drilled in the Allan Hills blue ice area, Antarctica. The 1-Ma ice is dated from the deficit in (40)Ar relative to the modern atmosphere and is present as a stratigraphically disturbed 12-m section at the base of a 126-m ice core. The 1-Ma ice appears to represent most of the amplitude of contemporaneous climate cycles and CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the ice range from 221 to 277 ppm and 411 to 569 parts per billion (ppb), respectively. These concentrations, together with measured ?D of the ice, are at the warm end of the field for glacial-interglacial cycles of the last 800 ky and span only about one-half of the range. The highest CO2 values in the 1-Ma ice fall within the range of interglacial values of the last 400 ka but are up to 7 ppm higher than any interglacial values between 450 and 800 ka. The lowest CO2 values are 30 ppm higher than during any glacial period between 450 and 800 ka. This study shows that the coupling of Antarctic temperature and atmospheric CO2 extended into the mid-Pleistocene and demonstrates the feasibility of discontinuously extending the current ice core record beyond 800 ka by shallow coring in Antarctic blue ice areas.

| S-EPMC4460481 | biostudies-literature

Ancient Rhamnaceae flowers impute an origin for flowering plants exceeding 250-million-years ago.

Project description:Setting the molecular clock to newly described 100-million-year-old flowering shoots of Phylica in Burmese amber enabled us to recalibrate the phylogenetic history of Rhamnaceae. We traced its origin to ∼260 million years ago (Ma) that can explain its migration within and beyond Gondwana since that time and implies an origin for flowering plants that stretches well beyond 290 Ma. Ancestral trait assignments also revealed that hard-seededness, fire-proneness, and to a lesser extent, heat-released seed dormancy, have a similarly long history in this clade.

| S-EPMC9254029 | biostudies-literature

Arrival and magnetization of carbonaceous chondrites in the asteroid belt before 4562 million years ago.

Project description:Meteorite magnetizations can provide rare insight into early Solar System evolution. Such data take on new importance with recognition of the isotopic dichotomy between non-carbonaceous and carbonaceous meteorites, representing distinct inner and outer disk reservoirs, and the likelihood that parent body asteroids were once separated by Jupiter and subsequently mixed. The arrival time of these parent bodies into the main asteroid belt, however, has heretofore been unknown. Herein, we show that weak CV (Vigarano type) and CM (Mighei type) carbonaceous chondrite remanent magnetizations indicate acquisition by the solar wind 4.2 to 4.8 million years after Ca-Al-rich inclusion (CAI) formation at heliocentric distances of ~2-4 AU. These data thus indicate that the CV and CM parent asteroids had arrived near, or within, the orbital range of the present-day asteroid belt from the outer disk isotopic reservoir within the first 5 million years of Solar System history.

| S-EPMC7716897 | biostudies-literature

A functionally conserved STORR gene fusion in Papaver species that diverged 16.8 million years ago.

Project description:The STORR gene fusion event is considered essential for the evolution of the promorphinan/morphinan subclass of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs) in opium poppy as the resulting bi-modular protein performs the isomerization of (S)- to (R)-reticuline essential for their biosynthesis. Here, we show that of the 12 Papaver species analysed those containing the STORR gene fusion also contain promorphinans/morphinans with one important exception. P. californicum encodes a functionally conserved STORR but does not produce promorphinans/morphinans. We also show that the gene fusion event occurred only once, between 16.8-24.1 million years ago before the separation of P. californicum from other Clade 2 Papaver species. The most abundant BIA in P. californicum is (R)-glaucine, a member of the aporphine subclass of BIAs, raising the possibility that STORR, once evolved, contributes to the biosynthesis of more than just the promorphinan/morphinan subclass of BIAs in the Papaveraceae.

| S-EPMC9174169 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data