ArticleNature communications2016
Low-oxygen waters limited habitable space for early animals.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- An expansive global oxygenation of Earth's surface environments 1.4 billion years ago.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ocean deoxygenation after the Sturtian Snowball.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A novel in-silico model explores LanM homologs among Hyphomicrobium spp.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Recurrent photic zone euxinia limited ocean oxygenation and animal evolution during the Ediacaran.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Effects of Seasonal Anoxia on the Microbial Community Structure in Demosponges in a Marine Lake in Lough Hyne, Ireland.mSphere · 2021Article
- Article
- The rise and early evolution of animals: where do we stand from a trace-fossil perspective?Interface focus · 2020Review
- Reconciling proxy records and models of Earth's oxygenation during the Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic.Interface focus · 2020Review
- Regional nutrient decrease drove redox stabilisation and metazoan diversification in the late Ediacaran Nama Group, Namibia.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Early animal evolution and highly oxygenated seafloor niches hosted by microbial mats.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Increase in metazoan ecosystem engineering prior to the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary in the Nama Group, Namibia.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Possible links between extreme oxygen perturbations and the Cambrian radiation of animals.Nature geoscience · 2019Article
- Oxygen, temperature and the deep-marine stenothermal cradle of Ediacaran evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Extensive marine anoxia during the terminal Ediacaran Period.Science advances · 2018Article
- Ediacara biota flourished in oligotrophic and bacterially dominated marine environments across Baltica.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Article
- Burrowers from the Past: Mitochondrial Signatures of Ordovician Bivalve Infaunalization.Genome biology and evolution · 2017Article
- First macrobiota biomineralization was environmentally triggered.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The oceans at the start of the Neoproterozoic Era (1,000-541 million years ago, Ma) were dominantly anoxic, but may have become progressively oxygenated, coincident with the rise of animal life. However, the control that oxygen exerted on the development of early animal ecosystems remains unclear, as previous research has focussed on the identification of fully anoxic or oxic conditions, rather than intermediate redox levels. Here we report anomalous cerium enrichments preserved in carbonate rocks across bathymetric basin transects from nine localities of the Nama Group, Namibia (∼550-541 Ma). In combination with Fe-based redox proxies, these data suggest that low-oxygen conditions occurred in a narrow zone between well-oxygenated surface waters and fully anoxic deep waters. Although abundant in well-oxygenated environments, early skeletal animals did not occupy oxygen impoverished regions of the shelf, demonstrating that oxygen availability (probably >10 μM) was a key requirement for the development of early animal-based ecosystems.
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