ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Ediacaran reorganization of the marine phosphorus cycle.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 99 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reversed marine phosphorus gradient in the Ediacaran Ocean.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The sub-arc mantle has remained oxidized since the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The importance of continents, oceans and plate tectonics for the evolution of complex life: implications for finding extraterrestrial civilizations.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Lithium isotopic constraints on the evolution of continental clay mineral factory and marine oxygenation in the earliest Paleozoic Era.Science advances · 2024Article
- Gene inversion led to the emergence of brackish archaeal heterotrophs in the aftermath of the Cryogenian Snowball Earth.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Biological diversification linked to environmental stabilization following the Sturtian Snowball glaciation.Science advances · 2023Article
- Recurrent photic zone euxinia limited ocean oxygenation and animal evolution during the Ediacaran.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Uncovering the Ediacaran phosphorus cycle.Nature · 2023Article
- Evolution of the crustal phosphorus reservoir.Science advances · 2023Article
- A long-term record of early to mid-Paleozoic marine redox change.Science advances · 2021Article
- Roles of Phosphate Solubilizing Microorganisms from Managing Soil Phosphorus Deficiency to Mediating Biogeochemical P Cycle.Biology · 2021Review
- Phanerozoic radiation of ammonia oxidizing bacteria.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- A persistently low level of atmospheric oxygen in Earth's middle age.Nature communications · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Ediacaran Period (635 to 541 Ma) marks the global transition to a more productive biosphere, evidenced by increased availability of food and oxidants, the appearance of macroscopic animals, significant populations of eukaryotic phytoplankton, and the onset of massive phosphorite deposition. We propose this entire suite of changes results from an increase in the size of the deep-water marine phosphorus reservoir, associated with rising sulfate concentrations and increased remineralization of organic P by sulfate-reducing bacteria. Simple mass balance calculations, constrained by modern anoxic basins, suggest that deep-water phosphate concentrations may have increased by an order of magnitude without any increase in the rate of P input from the continents. Strikingly, despite a major shift in phosphorite deposition, a new compilation of the phosphorus content of Neoproterozoic and early Paleozoic shows little secular change in median values, supporting the view that changes in remineralization and not erosional P fluxes were the principal drivers of observed shifts in phosphorite accumulation. The trigger for these changes may have been transient Neoproterozoic weathering events whose biogeochemical consequences were sustained by a set of positive feedbacks, mediated by the oxygen and sulfur cycles, that led to permanent state change in biogeochemical cycling, primary production, and biological diversity by the end of the Ediacaran Period.
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