ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Earliest land plants created modern levels of atmospheric oxygen.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
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70 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reconstructing spore evolution recalibrates the timescale of land plant diversification.Nature plants · 2026Article
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- Earth system instability explains redox paradox during late Cambrian SPICE event.Science advances · 2026Article
- Oxygen reductase origin followed the great oxidation event and terminated the Lomagundi excursion.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Carbon/phosphorus burial ratio reveals a rapid spread of land plants during the Late Ordovician.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Cooling-induced intensification of ocean anoxia in the mid-Paleozoic.Science advances · 2026Article
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- Dynamic deep marine oxygenation during the Early and Middle Paleozoic.Science advances · 2025Article
- Mid-Devonian ocean oxygenation enabled the expansion of animals into deeper-water habitats.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The evolution of Gaia(s).Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Repeated occurrences of marine anoxia under high atmospheric OProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Aquorin Bioluminescence-Based CaPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Marine sulphate captures a Paleozoic transition to a modern terrestrial weathering environment.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Time-resolved oxidative signal convergence across the algae-embryophyte divide.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life.Science advances · 2025Review
- Special Issue "Advances in the Physiology of Primary and Secondary Plant Metabolism Under Abiotic and Biotic Stress".International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- The radical impact of oxygen on prokaryotic evolution-enzyme inhibition first, uninhibited essential biosyntheses second, aerobic respiration third.FEBS letters · 2024Article
- Cryogenian Origins of Multicellularity in Archaeplastida.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social-ecological transformations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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7 authors.
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Abstract
The progressive oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere was pivotal to the evolution of life, but the puzzle of when and how atmospheric oxygen (O2) first approached modern levels (∼21%) remains unresolved. Redox proxy data indicate the deep oceans were oxygenated during 435-392 Ma, and the appearance of fossil charcoal indicates O2 >15-17% by 420-400 Ma. However, existing models have failed to predict oxygenation at this time. Here we show that the earliest plants, which colonized the land surface from ∼470 Ma onward, were responsible for this mid-Paleozoic oxygenation event, through greatly increasing global organic carbon burial-the net long-term source of O2 We use a trait-based ecophysiological model to predict that cryptogamic vegetation cover could have achieved ∼30% of today's global terrestrial net primary productivity by ∼445 Ma. Data from modern bryophytes suggests this plentiful early plant material had a much higher molar C:P ratio (∼2,000) than marine biomass (∼100), such that a given weathering flux of phosphorus could support more organic carbon burial. Furthermore, recent experiments suggest that early plants selectively increased the flux of phosphorus (relative to alkalinity) weathered from rocks. Combining these effects in a model of long-term biogeochemical cycling, we reproduce a sustained +2‰ increase in the carbonate carbon isotope (δ(13)C) record by ∼445 Ma, and predict a corresponding rise in O2 to present levels by 420-400 Ma, consistent with geochemical data. This oxygen rise represents a permanent shift in regulatory regime to one where fire-mediated negative feedbacks stabilize high O2 levels.
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