ArticlePloS one2014
The 2.1 Ga old Francevillian biota: biogenicity, taphonomy and biodiversity.
Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 117 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- A diverse Palaeoproterozoic microbial ecosystem implies early eukaryogenesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Pyrite morphology and sulfur isotopes refine taphonomic models for the 2.1 Ga Francevillian biota, Gabon.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A battle against arsenic toxicity by Earth's earliest complex life forms.Nature communications · 2025Article
- How to Be a Copenhagenistic-QBistic Everettist.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Proterozoic microfossils continue to provide new insights into the rise of complex eukaryotic life.Royal Society open science · 2024Review
- Acritarch-like Microorganisms from the 1.9 Ga Gunflint Chert, Canada.Astrobiology · 2022Article
- Oxygen suppression of macroscopic multicellularity.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Article
- Microbially induced potassium enrichment in Paleoproterozoic shales and implications for reverse weathering on early Earth.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Organism motility in an oxygenated shallow-marine environment 2.1 billion years ago.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- A Salutary Role of Reactive Oxygen Species in Intercellular Tunnel-Mediated Communication.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2018Review
- Three-dimensional preservation of cellular and subcellular structures suggests 1.6 billion-year-old crown-group red algae.PLoS biology · 2017Article
- Arsenic stress after the Proterozoic glaciations.Scientific reports · 2015Article
- The relative ages of eukaryotes and akaryotes.Journal of molecular evolution · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
28 authors at 18 institutions in 7 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Paleoproterozoic Era witnessed crucial steps in the evolution of Earth's surface environments following the first appreciable rise of free atmospheric oxygen concentrations ∼2.3 to 2.1 Ga ago, and concomitant shallow ocean oxygenation. While most sedimentary successions deposited during this time interval have experienced thermal overprinting from burial diagenesis and metamorphism, the ca. 2.1 Ga black shales of the Francevillian B Formation (FB2) cropping out in southeastern Gabon have not. The Francevillian Formation contains centimeter-sized structures interpreted as organized and spatially discrete populations of colonial organisms living in an oxygenated marine ecosystem. Here, new material from the FB2 black shales is presented and analyzed to further explore its biogenicity and taphonomy. Our extended record comprises variably sized, shaped, and structured pyritized macrofossils of lobate, elongated, and rod-shaped morphologies as well as abundant non-pyritized disk-shaped macrofossils and organic-walled acritarchs. Combined microtomography, geochemistry, and sedimentary analysis suggest a biota fossilized during early diagenesis. The emergence of this biota follows a rise in atmospheric oxygen, which is consistent with the idea that surface oxygenation allowed the evolution and ecological expansion of complex megascopic life.
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