It is easy to think that firm evidence for past glaciations lies in sedimentary strata that contain an unusually wide range of grain size, a jumble of different rock types – including some from far-off outcrops – and a dominance of angular fragments: similar to the boulder clay or till on which modern glaciers sit. In fact such evidence, in the absence of other signs, could have formed by a variety of other means. To main a semblance of hesitancy, rocks of that kind are now generally referred to as diamictites in the absence of other evidence that ice masses were involved in their deposition. Among the best is the discovery that diamictites rest on a surface that has been scored by the passage of rock-armoured ice – a striated pavement and, best of all, that the diamictites contain fragments that bear flat surfaces that are also scratched. The Carboniferous to Permian glaciation of the southern continents and India that helped Alfred Wegener to reconstruct the Pangaea supercontinent was proved by the abundant presence of striated pavements. Indeed, it was the striations themselves that helped clinch his revolutionising concept. On the reconstruction they formed a clear radiating pattern away from what was later to be shown by palaeomagnetic data to be the South Pole of those times.
29 Ma old striated pavement beneath the Dwyka Tillite in South Africa (credit: M.J Hambrey)
The multiple glacial epochs of the Precambrian that extended to the Equator during Snowball Earth conditions were identified from diamictites that are globally, roughly coeval, along with other evidence for frigid climates. Some of them contain dropstones that puncture the bedding as a result of having fallen through water, which reinforces a glacial origin. However, Archaean and Neoproterozoic striated pavements are almost vanishingly rare. Most of those that have been found are on a scale of only a few square metres. Diamictites have been reported from the latest Neoproterozoic Ediacaran Period, but are thin and not found in all sequences of that age. They are thought to indicate sudden climate changes linked to the hesitant rise of animal life in the run-up to the Cambrian Explosion. One occurrence, for which palaeomagnetic date suggest tropical latitude, is near Pingdingshan in central China above a local unconformity that is exposed on a series of small plateaus (Le Heron, D.P. and 9 others 2019. Bird’s-eye view of an Ediacaran subglacial landscape. Geology, v. 47, p. 705-709; DOI: 10.1130/G46285.1). To get a synoptic view the authors deployed a camera-carrying drone. The images show an irregular surface rather than one that is flat. It is littered with striations and other sub-glacial structures, such as faceting and fluting, together with other features that indicate plastic deformation of the underling sandstone. The structures suggest basal ice abrasion in the presence of subglacial melt water, beneath a southward flowing ice sheet
Spiralling prices for metals on the world market, especially those that are rare and involved in still-evolving technologies, together with depletion of onshore, high-grade reserves are beginning to make the opportunity of mining deep, ocean-floor resources attractive. By early 2018, fifteen companies had begun detailed economic assessment of one of the most remote swathes of the Pacific abyssal plains. In April 2018 (How rich are deep-sea resources?) I outlined the financial attractions and the ecological hazards of such ventures: both are substantial, to say the least. In Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off Okinawa the potential economic bonanza has begun, with extraction from deep-water sulfide deposits of zinc equivalent to Japan’s annual demand for that metal, together with copper, gold and lead. One of the most economically attractive areas lies far from EEZs, beneath the East Pacific Ocean between the Clarion and Clipperton transform faults. It is a huge field littered by polymetallic nodules, formerly known as manganese nodules because Mn is the most abundant in them. A recent article spelled out the potential environmental hazards which exploiting the resources of this region might bring (Hefferman, O. 2019. Seabed mining is coming – bringing mineral riches and fears of epic extinctions. Nature, v. 571, p. 465-468; DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-02242-y).
The distribution of potential ocean-floor metal-rich resources (Credit: Hefferman 2019)
Recording of the ecosystem on the 4 km deep floor of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) began in the 1970s. It is extraordinarily diverse for such a seemingly hostile environment. Despite its being dark, cold and with little oxygen, it supports a rich and unique diversity of more than 1000 species of worms, echinoderms, crustaceans, sponges, soft corals and a poorly known but probably huge variety of smaller animals and microbes inhabiting the mud itself. In 1989, marine scientists simulated the effect on the ecosystem of mining by using an 8-metre-wide plough harrow to break up the surface of a small plot. A plume of fine sediment rained down to smother the inhabitants of the plot and most of the 11 km2 surrounding it. Four subsequent visits up to 2015 revealed that recolonisation by its characteristic fauna has been so slow that the area has not recovered from the disturbance after three decades.
The International Seabed Authority (ISA), with reps from 169 maritime member-states, was created in 1994 by the United Nations to encourage and regulate ocean-floor mining; i.e. its function seems to be ‘both poacher and gamekeeper’. In 25 years, the ISA has approved only exploration activities and has yet to agree on an environmental protection code, such is the diversity of diplomatic interests and the lack of ecological data on which to base it. Of the 29 approved exploration licences, 16 are in the CCZ and span about 20% of it, one involving British companies has an area of 55,000 km2. ISA still has no plans to test the impact of the giant harvesting vehicles needed for commercial mining, and its stated intent is to keep only 30% of the CCZ free of mining ‘to protect biodiversity’. The worry among oceanographers and conservationists is that ISA will create a regulatory system without addressing the hazards properly. Commercial and technological planning is well advanced but stalled by the lack of a regulatory system as well as wariness because of the huge start-up costs in an entirely new economic venture.
The obvious concern for marine ecosystems is the extent of disturbance and ecosystem impact, both over time and as regards scale. The main problem lies in the particles that make up ocean-floor sediments, which are dominated by clay-size particles. The size of sedimentary particles considered to be clays ranges between 2.0 and 0.06 μm. According to Stokes Law, a clay particle at the high end of the clay-size range with a diameter of 2 μm has a settling speed in water of 2 μm s-1. The settling speed for the smallest clays is 1,000 time slower. So, even the largest clay particles injected only 100 m above the ocean floor would take 1.6 years to settle back to the ocean floor – if the water column was absolutely still. But even the 4,000 m deep abyssal plains are not at all stil, because of the ocean-water ‘conveyor belt’ driven by thermohaline circulation. An upward component of this flow would extend the time during which disturbed ocean-floor mud remains in suspension – if that component was a mere >2 μm s-1, even the largest clay particles would remain suspended indefinitely. Deepwater currents, albeit slow, would also disperse the plume of fines over much larger areas than those being mined. Moreover such turbidity pollution is likely to occur at the ocean surface as well, if the mining vessels processed the ore materials by washing nodules free of attached clay. Plumes from shipboard processing would be dispersed much further because of the greater speed of shallow currents. This would impact the upper and middling depths of the oceans that support even more diverse and, in the case of mid-depths poorly known, ecosystems Such plumes may settle only after decades or even centuries, if at all.
Processing on land, obviously, presents the same risk for near-shore waters. It may be said that such pollution could be controlled easily by settling ponds, as used in most conventional mines on land. But the ‘fines’ produced by milling hard ores are mainly silt-sized particles (2.0 to 60 μm) of waste minerals, such as quartz, whose settling speeds are proportional to the square of their diameter; thus a doubling in particle size results in four-times faster settling. The mainly clay-sized fines in deep-ocean ores would settle far more slowly, even in shallow ponds, than the rate at which they are added by ongoing ore processing; chances are, they would eventually be released either accidentally or deliberately
A mining code is expected in 2020, in which operating licences are likely to be for 30 years. Unlike the enforced allowance of environmental restoration once a land-based mining operation is approved, the sheer scale, longevity and mobility of fine-sediment plumes seem unlikely to be resolvable, however strong such environmental-protection clauses are for mining the ocean floor.
Imagine visiting a colony of nesting seagulls on an exposed sandbar. Their nests are roughly equally spaced, out of pecking range. As well as incubating individuals on their nests the air is full of screaming birds swooping towards you, and even pecking or buffeting your head. Only a relative few bird species nest in colonies. Some bury their eggs communally in warm sand or compost abandoning them for solar energy to hatch. The last approach is also that of many reptiles, notably turtles and crocodiles, but some crocodiles do behave like gulls, females guarding their buried clutches, so why not dinosaurs? Brooding in colonies has been suspected of dinosaurs, although most fossil eggs had been buried.
Upper Cretaceous sedimentary rocks in Mongolia have yielded more dinosaur eggs than most other places, especially in the northern Gobi Desert’s largely unvegetated outcrops. It is from there that exquisitely preserved, firm evidence has emerged of dinosaurs nesting communally (Kanaka, K. and 9 others 2019. Exceptional preservation of a Late Cretaceous dinosaur nesting site from Mongolia reveals colonial nesting behavior in a non-avian theropod. Geology, v. 47, p. 1-5; DOI: 10 .1130 /G46328.1). The site exposes 15 clutches about 1.5 m apart that, together, contain more than 50 spherical eggs 10 to 15 cm in diameter. Modern erosion has dissected the occurrences, and it is estimated that up to 32 clutches may have been laid in an area of ~286 m2. That the eggs had been laid on the surface, covered – possibly with organic matter – and then incubated is clearly evidenced by all of them resting in pockets on an erosion surface covered by the same thin, continuous layer of bright red sand. About 60% of them seem to have hatched successfully. Each eggshell contains the same doubled-layered infill of fine sediment made of surrounding sediment and broken shell fragments.
Clutch of near-spherical dinosaur eggs from Mongolia: scale bar = 10 cm. (Credit: Kanaka et al. 2019; Fig. 2A)
The detail of the nests suggests that they were created on an exposed surface during a single dry season and after hatching, when their infills formed, they were gently flooded as stream levels rose to deposit the thin, red covering layer. Whether or not the eggs were brooded or merely protected cannot be assessed, despite the excellence of preservation. But the high hatching success suggests that adults fended off predators during incubation. Egg shape and size point to their having been laid by a single species of theropod dinosaur; probably not ancestral to birds, but a group that includes velociraptors and tyrannosaurs. Yet nest-tending has clear parallels among later birds.
The 2017 discovery in Morocco of fossilised, anatomically modern humans (AMH) dated at 286 ka (see: Origin of anatomically modern humans, June 2017) pushed back the origin of our species by at least 100 ka. Indeed, the same site yielded flint tools around 315 ka old. Aside from indicating our antiquity, the Jebel Irhoud discovery expanded the time span during which AMH might have wandered into Eurasia, as a whole variety of earlier hominins had managed since about 1.8 Ma ago. Sure enough, the widely accepted earliest modern human migrants from Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel (90 to 120 ka) were superseded in 2018 by AMH fossils at Misliya Cave, also in Israel, in association with 177 ka stone artefacts (see Earliest departure of modern humans from Africa, January 2018). Such early dates helped make more sense of very old ages for unaccompanied stone tools in the Arabian Peninsula as tracers for early migration routes. Unlike today, Arabia was a fertile place during a series of monsoon-related cycles extending back to about 160 ka (see: Arabia : staging post for human migrations? September 2014; Wet spells in Arabia and human migration, March 2015). The ‘record’ has now shifted to Greece.
Key ages of early H. sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans (credit: Delson, 2019; Fig. 1)
Fossil human remains unearthed decades ago often undergo revised assessment as more precise dating methods and anatomical ideas become available. Such is the case for two partial human skulls found in the Apidima Cave complex of southern Greece during the late 1970s. Now, using the uranium-series method, one has been dated at 170 ka, the other being at least 210 ka old (Harvati, K. and 11 others 2019. Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Nature, v. 571online; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1376-z). These are well within the age range of European Neanderthals. Indeed, the younger one does have the characteristic Neanderthal brow ridges and elongated shape. Albeit damaged, the older skull is more rounded and lacks the Neanderthals’ ‘bun’-like bulge at the back; it is an early member of Homo sapiens. In fact 170 ka older than any other early European AMH, and a clear contemporary of the long-lived Neanderthal population of Eurasia; in fact the age relations could indicate that Neanderthals replaced these early AMH migrants.
Given suitable climatic conditions in the Levant and Arabia, those areas are the closest to Africa to which they are linked by an ‘easy’, overland route. To reach Greece is not only a longer haul from the Red Sea isthmus but involves the significant barrier of the Dardanelles strait, or it requires navigation across the Mediterranean Sea. Such is the ‘specky’ occurrence of hominin fossils in both space and time that a new geographic outlier such as Apidima doesn’t help much in understanding how migration happened. Until – and if – DNA can be extracted it is impossible to tell if AMH-Neanderthal hybridisation occurred at such an early date and if the 210 ka population in Greece vanished without a trace or left a sign in the genomics of living humans. Yet, both time and place being so unexpected, the discovery raises optimism of further discoveries to come
A jawbone discovered in a Tibetan cave turned out to be that of a Denisovan who had lived and died there about 160,000 years ago (see: Denisovan on top of the world; 6 May, 2019). That discovery owed nothing to ancient DNA, because the fossil proved to contain none that could be sequenced. But the dentine in one of two molar teeth embedded in the partial jaw did yield protein. The teeth are extremely large and have three roots, rather than the four more common in modern, non-Asian humans, as are Denisovan teeth from in the Siberian Denisova Cave. Fortunately, those teeth also yielded proteins. In an analogous way to the genomic sequencing of nucleotides (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine) in DNA, the sequence of amino acids from which proteins are built can also be analysed. Such a proteomic sequence can be compared with others in a similar manner to genetic sequences in DNA. The Tibetan and Siberian dentine proteins are statistically almost the same.
Triple helix structure of collagen, colour-coded to represent different amino acids (credit: Wikipedia)
At present the most ancient human DNA that has been recovered – from an early Neanderthal in the Sima de los Huesos in Spain – is 430,000 years old (see: Mitochondrial DNA from 400 thousand year old humans; December 2013). Yet it is proving difficult to go beyond that time, even in the cool climates that slow down the degradation of DNA. The oldest known genome of any animal is that of mtDNA from a 560–780 thousand year old horse, a leg bone of which was extracted from permafrost in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The technologies on which sequencing of ancient DNA depends may advance, but, until then, tracing the human evolutionary journey back beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans seems dependent on proteomic approaches (Warren, M. 2019. Move over, DNA: ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity’s history. Nature, v. 570, p. 433-436; DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-01986-x). Are the earlier Homo heidelbergensis and H. erectus within reach?
It seems that they may be, as might even earlier hominins. The 1.8 Ma Dmanisi site in Georgia, now famous for fossils of the earliest humans known to have left Africa, also yielded an extinct rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus). Proteins have been extracted from it, which show that Stephanorhinus was closely related to the later woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis). Collagen protein sequences from a 3.4 Ma camel preserved in the Arctic and even from a Tanzanian 3.8 Ma ostrich egg shell show the huge potential of ancient proteomics. Most exciting is that last example, not only because it extends the potential age range to that of Australopithecus afarensis but into tropical regions where DNA is at its most fragile. Matthew Warren points out potential difficulties, such as the limit of a few thousand amino acids in protein sequences compared with 3 million variants in DNA, and the fact that the most commonly found fossil proteins – collagens – may have evolved very little. On the positive side, proteins have been detected in a 195 Ma old fossil dinosaur. But some earlier reports of intact diosaur proteins have been questioned recently (Saitta, E.T. et al. 2019. Cretaceous dinosaur bone contains recent organic material and provides an environment conducive to microbial communities. eLife, 8:e46205; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.46205)
Steadily, the record of stone tools has progressed further back in time as archaeological surveys have expanded, especially in East Africa (Stone tools go even further back, May 2015). The earliest known tools – now termed Lomekwian – are 3.3 million years old, from deposits in north-western Kenya, as are cut-marked bone fragments from Ethiopia’s Afar region. There is no direct link to their makers, but at least six species of Australopithecus occupied Africa during the Middle Pliocene. Similarly, there are various options for who made Oldowan tools in the period between 2.6 and 2.0 Ma, the only known direct association being with Homo habilis in 2.0 Ma old sediments from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge; the type locality for the Oldowan.
The shapes of stone tools and the manufacturing techniques required to make them and other artefacts, are among the best, if not the only, means of assessing the cognitive abilities of their makers. A new, detailed study of the shapes of 327 Oldowan tools from a 2.6 Ma old site in Afar, Ethiopia has revealed a major shift in hominin working methods (Braun, D.R. and 17 others 2019. Earliest known Oldowan artifacts at >2.58 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, highlight early technological diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy, v. 116, p. 11712-11717; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820177116). The sharp-edged tools were made by more complex methods than the Lomekwian. Analysis suggests that they were probably made by striking two lumps of rock together, i.e. by a deliberate two-handed technique. On the other hand, Lomekwian tools derived simply by repeatedly bashing one rock against a hard surface, not much different from the way some living primates make rudimentary tools. But the morphology of the Ledi-Geraru tools also falls into several distinct types, each suggesting systematic removal of only 2 or 3 flakes to make a sharp edge. The variations in technique suggest that several different groups with different traditions used the once lake-side site.
Various 2.6 Ma old Oldowan stone tools from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia (credit: Braun et al., 2019)
Ledi-Geraru lies about 5 km from another site dated about 200 ka earlier than the tools, which yielded a hominin jawbone, likely to be from the earliest known member of the genus Homo. A key feature that suggested a human affinity is the nature of the teeth that differ markedly from those of contemporary and earlier australopithecines. It appears that the tools are of early human manufacture. The ecosystem suggested by bones of other animals, such as antelope and giraffe was probably open grassland – a more difficult environment for hominin subsistence. The time of the Lomekwian tools was one of significantly denser vegetation, with more opportunities for gathering plant foods. Perhaps this environmental shift was instrumental in driving hominins to increased scavenging of meat, the selection pressure acting on culture to demand tools sharp enough to remove meat from the prey of other animals quickly, and on physiology and cognitive power to achieve that.
The first clear and abundant signs of multicelled organisms appear in the geological record during the 635 to 541 Ma Ediacaran Period of the Neoproterozoic, named from the Ediacara Hills of South Australia where they were first discovered in the late 19th century. But it wasn’t until 1956, when schoolchildren fossicking in Charnwood Forest north of Leicester in Britain found similar body impressions in rocks that were clearly Precambrian age that it was realised the organism predated the Cambrian Explosion of life. Subsequently they have turned-up on all continents that preserve rocks of that age (see: Larging the Ediacaran, March 2011). The oldest of them, in the form of small discs, date back to about 610 Ma, while suspected embryos of multicelled eukaryotes are as old as the very start of the Edicaran (see; Precambrian bonanza for palaeoembryologists, August 2006).
Artist’s impression of the Ediacaran Fauna (credit: Science)
The Ediacaran fauna appeared soon after the Marinoan Snowball Earth glaciogenic sediments that lies at the top of the preceding Cryogenian Period (650-635 Ma), which began with far longer Sturtian glaciation (715-680 Ma). A lesser climatic event – the 580 Ma old Gaskiers glaciation – just preceded the full blooming of the Ediacaran fauna. Geologists have to go back 400 million years to find an earlier glacial epoch at the outset of the Palaeoproterozoic. Each of those Snowball Earth events was broadly associated with increased availability of molecular oxygen in seawater and the atmosphere. Of course, eukaryote life depends on oxygen. So, is there a connection between prolonged, severe climatic events and leaps in the history of life? It does look that way, but begs the question of how Snowball Earth events were themselves triggered. Continue reading “Geochemical background to the Ediacaran explosion”→
Phytoplankton bloom in the Channel off SW England (Landsat image)
At present the central areas of the oceans are wet deserts; too depleted in nutrients to support the photosynthesising base of a significant food chain. The key factor that is missing is dissolved divalent iron that acts as a minor, but vital, nutrient for phytoplankton. Much of the soluble iron that does help stimulate plankton ‘blooms’ emanates from the land surface in wind blown dust (Palaeoclimatology September 2011) or dissolved in river water. A large potential source is from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which emit seawater that has circulated through the basalts of the oceanic crust. Such fluids hydrate the iron-rich mafic minerals olivine and pyroxene, which makes iron available for transport. The fluids originate from water held in the muddy, organic-rich sediments that coat the ocean floor, and have lost any oxygen present in ocean-bottom water. Their chemistry is highly reducing and thereby retains soluble iron liberated by crustal alteration to emanate from hydrothermal vents. Because cold ocean-bottom waters are oxygenated by virtue of having sunk from the surface as part of thermohaline circulation, it does seem that ferrous iron should quickly be oxidised and precipitated as trivalent ferric compounds soon after hydrothermal fluids emerge. However, if some was able to rise to the surface it could fertilise shallow ocean water and participate in phytoplankton blooms, the sinking of dead organic matter then effectively burying carbon beneath the ocean floor; a ‘biological pump’ in the carbon cycle with a direct influence on climate. Until recently this hypothesis had little observational support. Continue reading “Soluble iron, black smokers and climate”→
The northwest of Scotland has been a magnet to geologists for more than a century. It is easily accessed, has magnificent scenery and some of the world’s most complex geology. The oldest and structurally most tortuous rocks in Europe – the Lewisian Gneiss Complex – which span crustal depths from its top to bottom, dominate much of the coast. These are unconformably overlain by a sequence of mainly terrestrial sediments of Meso- to Neoproterozoic age – the Torridonian Supergroup – laid down by river systems at the edge of the former continent of Laurentia. They form a series of relic hills resting on a rugged landscape carved into the much older Lewisian. In turn they are capped by a sequence of Cambrian to Lower Ordovician shallow-marine sediments. A more continuous range of hills no more than 20 km eastward of the coast hosts the famous Moine Thrust Belt in which the entire stratigraphy of the region was mangled between 450 and 430 million years ago when the elongated microcontinent of Avalonia collided with and accreted to Laurentia. Exposures are the best in Britain and, because of the superb geology, probably every geologist who graduated in that country visited the area, along with many international geotourists. The more complex parts of this relatively small area have been mapped and repeatedly examined at scales larger than 1:10,000; its geology is probably the best described on Earth. Yet, it continues to throw up dramatic conclusions. However, the structurally and sedimentologically simple Torridonian was thought to have been done and dusted decades ago, with a few oddities that remained unresolved until recently.
Grossly simplified geological map of NW Scotland (credit: British Geological Survey)
Active sedimentation in the Indus and Upper Ganges plains (green vegetated) derived from rapid erosion of the Himalaya (credit: Google Earth)
The Proterozoic Eon of the Precambrian is subdivided into the Palaeo-, Meso- and Neoproterozoic Eras that are, respectively, 900, 600 and 450 Ma long. The degree to which geoscientists are sufficiently interested in rocks within such time spans is roughly proportional to the number of publications whose title includes their name. Searching the ISI Web of Knowledge using this parameter yields 2000, 840 and 2700 hits in the last two complete decades, that is 2.2, 1.4 and 6.0 hits per million years, respectively. Clearly there is less interest in the early part of the Proterozoic. Perhaps that is due to there being smaller areas over which they are exposed, or maybe simply because what those rocks show is inherently less interesting than those of the Neoproterozoic. The Neoproterozoic is stuffed with fascinating topics: the appearance of large-bodied life forms; three Snowball Earth episodes; and a great deal of tectonic activity, including the Pan-African orogeny. The time that precedes it isn’t so gripping: it is widely known as the ‘boring billion’ – coined by the late Martin Brazier – from about 1.75 to 0.75 Ga. The Palaeoproterozoic draws attention by encompassing the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’ around 2.4 Ga, the massive deposition of banded iron formations up to 1.8 Ga, its own Snowball Earth, emergence of the eukaryotes and several orogenies. The Mesoproterozoic witnesses one orogeny, the formation of a supercontinent (Rodinia) and even has its own petroleum potential (93 billion barrels in place in Australia’s Beetaloo Basin. So it does have its high points, but not a lot. Although data are more scanty than for the Phanerozoic Eon, during the Mesoproterozoic the Earth’s magnetic field was much steadier than in later times. That suggests that motions in the core were in a ‘steady state’, and possibly in the mantle as well. The latter is borne out by the lower pace of tectonics in the Mesoproterozoic. Continue reading “The effect of surface processes on tectonics”→
About 39 thousand years ago all sign of the presence of Neanderthal bands in their extensive range across western Eurasia disappears. Their demise occurred during a period of relative warmth (Marine-Isotope Stage-3) following a cold period at its worst around 65 ka (MIS-4). They had previously thrived since their first appearance in Eurasia at about 250 ka, surviving at least two full glacial cycles. Their demise occurred around 5 thousand years after they were joined in western Eurasia by anatomically modern humans (AMH). During their long period of habitation they had adapted well to a range of climatic zones from woodland to tundra. During their overlap both groups shared much the same food resources, dominated by large herbivores whose numbers burgeoned during the warm period, with the difference that Neanderthals seemed to have depended on ranges centred on fixed sites of habitation while AMH maintained a nomadic lifestyle. Having shared a common African ancestry about 400 thousand years ago, DNA studies have revealed that the two populations interbred regularly, probably in the earlier period of overlap in west Asia from around 120 thousand years ago and possibly in Europe too after 44 ka. Considering their previous tenacity, how the Neanderthals met their end is something of a mystery. It may have been a result of competition for resources with AMH, which could be countered by the increase in food resources. Maybe physical conflict was involved, or perhaps disease imported with AMH from warmer climes. Genetic absorption through interbreeding of a small population with a larger one of AMH is a possibility, although DNA evidence is lacking. An inability to adapt to climate change contradicts the Neanderthals long record and their disappearance during MIS-3. Previous population estimates of changing Neanderthal populations in the Iberian Peninsula (see Fig. 2 in Roberts, M.F. & Bricher, S.E 2018. Modeling the disappearance of the Neanderthals using principles of population dynamics and ecology. Journal of Archaeological Science, v. 100, p.16-31; DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2018.09.012) show decline from about 70,000 to 20,000 before MIS-4, then recovery to about 40,000 before the arrival of AMH at 44 ka followed by a decline to extinction thereafter. Roberts and Bricher developed a model for investigating demographics from archaeological evidence that is neutral as regards any particular hypothesis for Neanderthal extinction.
Artistic reconstruction of Neanderthal family group (credit: Nikola Solic, Reuters)
Where did all our water come from? The Earth’s large complement of H2O, at the surface, in its crust and even in the mantle, is what sets it apart in many ways from the rest of the rocky Inner Planets. They are largely dry, tectonically torpid and devoid of signs of life. For a long while the standard answer has been that it was delivered by wave after wave of comet impacts during the Hadean, based on the fact that most volatiles were driven to the outermost Solar System, eventually to accrete as the giant planets and the icy worlds and comets of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, once the Sun sparked its fusion reactions That left its immediate surroundings depleted in them and enriched in more refractory elements and compounds from which the Inner Planets accreted. But that begs another question: how come an early comet ‘storm’ failed to ‘irrigate’ Mercury, Venus and Mars? New geochemical data offer a different scenario, albeit with a link to the early comet-storms paradigm.
Simulated view of the Earth from lunar orbit: the ‘wet’ and the ‘dry’. (credit: Adobe Stock)
Three geochemists from the Institut für Planetologie, University of Münster, Germany, led by Gerrit Budde have been studying the isotopes of the element molybdenum (Mo) in terrestrial rocks and meteorite collections. Molybdenum is a strongly siderophile (‘iron loving’) metal that, along with other transition-group metals, easily dissolves in molten iron. Consequently, when the Earth’s core began to form very early in Earth’s history, available molybdenum was mostly incorporated into it. Yet Mo is not that uncommon in younger rocks that formed by partial melting of the mantle, which implies that there is still plenty of it mantle peridotites. That surprising abundance may be explained by its addition along with other interplanetary material after the core had formed. Using Mo isotopes to investigate pre- and post-core formation events is similar to the use of isotopes of other transition metals, such as tungsten (see Planetary science, May 2016). Continue reading “Earth’s water and the Moon”→
The issue of erecting a new stratigraphic Epoch encompassing the time since humans had a global effect on the Earth System has irked me ever since the term emerged for discussion and resolution by the scientific community in 2000. An Epoch in a chronostratigraphic sense is one of several arbitrary units that encompass all the rocks formed during a defined interval of time. The last 541 million years (Ma) of geological time is defined as an Eon – the Phanerozoic. In turn that comprises three Eras – Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The third level of division is that of Periods, of which there are 11 that make up the Phanerozoic. In turn the Periods comprise a total of 38 fourth-level Epochs and 85 at the fifth tier of Ages. All of these are of global significance, and there are even finer local divisions that do not appear on the International Chronostratigraphic Chart . If you examine the Chart you will find that no currently agreed Epoch lasted less than 11.7 thousand years (the Holocene) and all the others spanned 1 Ma to tens of Ma (averaged at 14.2 Ma). Indeed, even Ages span a range from hundreds of thousands to millions of years (averaged at 6 Ma).
The Vattenfall lignite mine in Germany; the Anthropocene personified
In the 3rd week of May 2019 the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) sat down to decide on when the Anthropocene actually started. That date would be passed on up the hierarchy of the geoscientific community eventually to meet the scrutiny of its highest body, the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences, and either be ratified or not. In the meantime the AWG is seeking a site at which the lower boundary of the Anthropocene would be defined by the science’s equivalent of a ‘golden spike’; the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). Continue reading “Anthropocene edging closer to being ‘official’”→
The spacecraft Chang’E-4 landed on the far side of the Moon in January; something of a triumph for the Peoples’ Republic of China as it was a first. It was more than a power gesture at a time of strained relations between the PRC and the US, for it carried a rover (Yutu2) that deploys a panoramic camera, ground penetrating radar, means of assessing interaction of the solar wind with the lunar surface, and a Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS). The lander module itself bristles with instrumentation, but Yutu2 (meaning Jade Rabbit) has relayed the first scientific breakthrough.
Variation in topography (blue – low to red – high) over the Moon’s South Pole, showing the Aitken Basin and the Chang’E-4 landing site. (Credit: NASA/Goddard)
‘There’s a seaside place they call Blackpool that’s famous for fresh air and fun’. Well, maybe, not any more. If you, dear weekender couples, lie still after the ‘fun’ the Earth may yet move for you. Not much, I’ll admit, for British fracking regulations permit Cuadrilla, who have a drill rig at nearby Preston New Road on the Fylde coastal plain of NW England, only to trigger earthquakes with a magnitude less than 0.5 on the Richter scale. This condition was applied after early drilling by Cuadrilla had stimulated earthquakes up to magnitude 3. To the glee of anti-fracking groups the magnitude 0.5 limit has been regularly exceeded, thereby thwarting Cuadrilla’s ambitions from time to time. Leaving aside the view of professional geologists that the pickings for fracked shale gas in Britain [June 2014] are meagre, the methods deployed in hydraulic fracturing of gas-prone shales do pose seismic risks. Geology, beneath the Fylde is about as simple as it gets in tectonically tortured Britain. There are no active faults, and no significant dormant ones near the surface that have moved since about 250 Ma ago; most of Britain is riven by major fault lines, some of which are occasionally active, especially in prospective shale-gas basins near the Pennines. When petroleum companies are bent on fracking they use a drilling technology that allows one site to sink several wells that bend with depth to travel almost horizontally through the target shale rock. A water-based fluid containing a mix of polymers and surfactants to make it slick, plus fine sand or ceramic particles, are pumped at very high pressures into the rock. Joints and bedding in the shale are thus forced open and maintained in that condition by the sandy material, so that gas and even light oil can accumulate and flow up the drill stems to the surface. Continue reading “Frack me nicely?”→
A sudden collapse of global climate around 12.8 ka and equally brusque warming 11.5 ka ago is called the Younger Dryas. It brought the last ice age to an end. Because significant warming preceded this dramatic event palaeoclimatologists have pondered its cause since it came to their attention in the early 20th century as a stark signal in the pollen content of lake cores – Dyas octopetala, a tundra wild flower, then shed more pollen than before or afterwards; hence the name. A century on, two theories dominate: North Atlantic surface water was freshened by a glacial outburst flood that shut down the Gulf Stream [June 2006]; a large impact event shed sufficient dust to lower global temperatures [July 2007]. An oceanographic event remains the explanation of choice for many, whereas the evidence for an extraterrestrial cause – also suggested to have triggered megafaunal extinctions in North America – has its supporters and detractors. The first general reaction to the idea of an impact cause was the implausibility of the evidence [November 2010], yet the discovery by radar of a major impact crater beneath the Greenland ice cap [November 2018] resurrected the ‘outlandish’ notion. A recent paper in Nature: Scientific Reports further sharpens the focus.
Temperature fluctuations over the Greenland ice cap during the past 17,000 years, showing the abrupt cooling during the Younger Dryas. (credit: Don Easterbrook)
Who the Denisovans were is almost completely bound up with their DNA. Until 2019 their only tangible remains were from a single Siberian cave and amounted to a finger bone, a toe bone three molars and fragment of limb bone. Yet they provided DNA from four individuals who lived in Denis the Hermit’s cave from 30 to more than 100 thousand years ago. The analyses revealed that the Denisovans, like the Neanderthals, left their genetic mark in modern people who live outside of Africa, specifically native people of Melanesia and Australia . Remarkably, one of them revealed that a 90 ka female Denisovan was the offspring of a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother whose DNA suggested that she may have come from the far-off Balkans. Living, native Tibetans, whose DNA has been analysed, share a gene (EPAS1) with Denisovans, which regulates the body’s production of haemoglobin and enables Tibetans and Nepalese Sherpas to thrive at extremely high altitudes (see The earliest humans in Tibet).
The Baishiya Karst Cave in eastern Tibet, with Buddhist prayer flags (credit: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University )
Part of a hominin lower jaw unearthed by a Buddhist monk in 1980 from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau, at a height of 3280 m, found its way by a circuitous route to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in 2016. It carries two very large molars comparable in size with those found at the Denisova Cave, and which peculiarly have three roots rather than the four in the jaws of non-Asian, living humans. East Asians commonly show this trait. This and other aspects of the fossil teeth resemble those of some uncategorised early hominin fossils from China. Dating of speleothem calcium carbonate with which the jaw is encrusted suggests that the fossil dates back to at least 160 thousand years ago, around the oldest date recovered from Denisova Cave; during the glacial period before the last one. So the individual was able to survive winter conditions worse than those experienced today on the Tibetan Plateau. Further excavation in the cave found numerous stone artefacts and cut-marked animal bones (Chen, F. and 18 others 2019.A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, v. 569, published online; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x).
Unfortunately the Tibetan Jaw did not yield DNA capable of being sequenced, so the issues of inheritance of the ‘high-altitude’ gene and wider relatedness of the individual could not be checked. However, one of the teeth did contain preserved protein that can be analysed in an analogous way to DNA, but with less revealing detail. The results were sufficient to demonstrate that the mandible was consistent with a hominin population closely related to the Denisovans of the Siberian cave.
No doubt a path has already been beaten to the Tibetan cave, in the hope of further hominin material. To me the resemblance of the Tibetan fossil jaw to other hominin finds in China, including those from Xuchang, summarised here, is exciting. None of them have been subject to modern biological analysis. Perhaps the ‘real Denisovan’ will emerge from them.
Experiments aimed at suggesting how RNA and DNA – prerequisites for life, reproduction and evolution – might have formed from a ‘primordial soup’ have made slow progress. Another approach to the origin of life is investigation of the most basic chemical reactions that it engages in. Whatever the life form, prokaryote or eukaryote, its core processes involve reducing carbon dioxide, or other simple carbon-bearing compounds, and water to synthesise organic molecules that make up cell matter. Organisms also engage in metabolising biological compounds to generate energy. At their root, these two processes mirror each other; a creative network of reactions and another that breaks compounds down, known as the Krebs- and the reverse-Krebs cycles. In living organisms both are facilitated by other organic compounds that, of course, are themselves produced by cells. How such networks arose under inorganic conditions remains unknown, but three biochemists at the University of Strasbourg in France (Muchowska, K.B. et al. 2019. Synthesis and breakdown of universal metabolic precursors promoted by iron. Nature, v. 569, p. 104-107; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1151-1) have designed an inorganic experiment. They aimed to investigate how two simple organic compounds, which conceivably could have formed in a lifeless early environment, might have been encouraged to kick-start basic living processes. These are glyoxylate (HCOCO2–) and pyruvate (CH3COCO2–).
The most difficult chemical step in building complex organic compounds is inducing carbon atoms to bond together through C-C bonds; a process that thermodynamics tends to thwart but is accomplished in living cells by adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP). Previous workers focussed on interactions between reactive compounds, such as cyanide and formaldehyde, as candidates for the precursors of life, but such chemistry is totally different from what actually goes on in organisms. Joseph Moran, one of the co-authors of the paper, and his research group recently settled on five fundamental linkages of C, H and O as ‘universal hubs’ at the core of the Krebs cycle and its reverse. Kamila Muchowska and co-workers found that glyoxylate and pyruvate introduced into a simulated hydrothermal fluid that contains ions of ferrous iron (reduced Fe2+) were able to combine in producing all five ‘universal hubs. Ferrous iron clearly acted as a catalyst, through being a powerful reducing agent or electron donor, to get around the stringencies of classic thermodynamics. Moran’s team had previously shown that pyruvate itself can form inorganically from CO2 in water laced with iron, cobalt and nickel ions. Formation of glyoxylate in such a manner has yet to be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the two together in a watery soup of transition metal ions seem destined to produce an abundance of exactly the compounds at the root of living processes. In fact the experiment showed that all but two of the eleven components of the Krebs cycle can be synthesised inorganically.
Metal-rich ‘black smoker’ at a hydrothermal vent on the mid-Atlantic ridge(credit: MARUM, Germany)
Until the rise of free oxygen in the Earth system some 2400 Ma ago, the oceans would have been awash with soluble ferrous iron. This would have been especially the case around hydrothermal vents that result from the interaction between water and hot mafic lavas of the oceanic crust, together with less abundant transition-metal ions, such as those of nickel and cobalt. The ocean-vent hypothesis for the origin of life seems set for a surge forward.
The earliest signs that hominins had colonised the island of Luzon in the Philippines took the form of crude stone tools found around half a century ago. Re-excavation of one of the sites uncovered yet more tools buried in a river-channel deposit, along with remains of a butchered rhinoceros dated at around 700 ka by two methods (see Clear signs of a hominin presence on the Philippines at around 700 ka May 2018). The primitive nature of the tools and their age suggested that Asian Homo erectus had managed to reach the Philippine archipelago, despite it being separated from larger islands by deep water. Even during large falls in sea level (up to 130 m) during glacial periods that exposed Sundaland, which linked the larger islands of Indonesia to mainland Eurasia, at best only a narrow stretch of sea (~20 km) connected the Philippines to the wider world. For most of the time since the earliest known colonisation any hominins on the islands would have been cut off from other populations.
Topography of the Philippines, showing location of the Kalinga site. Palest blue sea may have been above sea level only during extreme glacial maxima. (credit: Wikipedia)
The first hominin fossil found by archaeologists in 2007 was a 67 ka old toe bone (metatarsal) in cave sediments from Northern Luzon. It was undoubtedly from Homo, but which species was unclear. More recent excavations added a mere 12 fossil fragments, probably from three individuals; 7 teeth, 4 adult finger- and toe bones and part of the femur of a juvenile (Détroit, F. and 8 others 2019. A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines. Nature, v. 568, p. 181–186; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1067-9). The finger bones, being curved, are unlike those of modern humans and H. erectus. The teeth are even more different; for instance the premolars show two or three roots – ours have but one – and their unusually tiny molars only a single root. The combined features are sufficiently distinct to suggest a separate species (H. luzonensis). The small teeth may indicate that the adults may have been even smaller that the ‘Hobbits’ of Flores and anatomically different.
Like H. floresiensis, as a result of isolation the new human species probably evolved to become small, possibly from very low number of H. erectus original colonisers. But an even stranger possibility is suggested by their curved toe and finger bones. They may have been habitual climbers as much as walkers – unlike us and H. erectus. Could that indicate that their ancestors left Africa already distinct from the rest of Late Pleistocene humans? That is also a disputed hypothesis for the origins of H. floresiensis remains of whom are more complete. Similarly, they pose the issue of how their progenitors managed to get to the archipelago: deliberately by boat or being carried there clinging in desperation to vegetation torn-up by tsunamis and transported seawards by the back-wash.
The New Yorker magazine normally features journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. So it is odd that this Condé Nast glossy for the chattering classes snaffled online what may be the geological scoop of the 21st century so far (Preston, D. 2019. The day the dinosaurs died. The New Yorker 8 April 2019 issue). The paper that lies at the centre of the story had not been published and nor had the issue of The New Yorker in which Douglas Preston’s story was scheduled for publication. The very day (29 March 2019) that Britain was thwarted of its Brexit moment the world’s media was frothing with news about the end of another era; the Mesozoic. The paper itself was published online on April Fools’ Day with a title that is superficially arcane (DePalma, R.A. and 11 others 2019. A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, early online publication;p DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817407116). But its contents are the stuff of dreams for any aspiring graduate student of palaeontology; the Indiana Jones opportunity.
An ‘onshore surge deposit’ occurs at many Western Hemisphere sites where the K-Pg boundary outcrops in terrestrial or shallow-marine sediments. The closer to the Chicxulub crater north of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula the more obvious they are, for they result from the tsunamis that immediately followed the asteroid impact. Lead author Robert DePalma, now of the University of Kansas, became focussed on the dinosaur-rich, Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota as an undergraduate. Accepted for graduate studies he was directed to a project on the fauna of lacustrine sediments close to the K-Pg boundary layer, which is well-known in the area, and that’s what he has been engaged with ever since. In 2012 he was guided to a remarkable locality by a rockhound, disappointed because it exposed extremely fossil-rich sediments but was so soft that none could be extracted intact with a hammer and chisel. It turned out to have resulted from a surge along a sinuous river that had washed debris onto a point-bar deposit at the inside of a meander. The debris includes remains of both marine and terrestrial organisms and shows clear signs of having been swept upriver, i.e. from the sea and possibly the result of a tsunami. Being capped by a thin, iridium-rich layer of impactite, the 1.5 metre surge deposit is part of the K-Pg boundary layer, and probably represented only a few hours before being blanketed by ejecta.
This Event Deposit comprises two graded, fining-upwards units and thus two distinct surges, with a thin mat of vegetation fragments immediately below the Ir-rich clay cap that also contains sparse shocked quartz grains. The Event Deposit contains altered glass spherules throughout, which cgradually become smaller higher in the 1.5 m sequence. Some of the larger spherules produced ‘micro-craters’ in the sediments. Fossils include marine ammonite fragments (some still nacreous) and freshwater fish (paddlefish and sturgeon). The fish are so complete as to suggest an absence of scavengers. The paper itself contains little of the information that dominated Preston’s New Yorker article and the global media coverage. This included clear evidence that the fish ingested spherules, found clogging their gills and possible causing their death. There are examples of spherules embedded in amber formed from plant sap, which suggests sub-aerial fall of ejecta, and among the marine faunal samples are teeth of fish and reptiles (see DePalma et al’s Supplemental Data). The most startling finds reported by Preston are nowhere to be found in DePalma et al’s paper or its supplement. These include possible dinosaur feathers; a fragment of ceratopsian dinosaur skin attached to a hip bone; a burrow containing a mammal jaw that penetrates the K-Pg boundary layer; dinosaur remains, including an egg (complete with embryo) and hatchlings of dinosaurian groups found at deeper levels in the Hell Creek Formation. Previously, palaeontologists had found no dinosaur remains less than 3 m below the K-Pg boundary layer anywhere on Earth, prompting the suggestion that they had become extinct before the near-instantaneous effects of Chicxulub, and were perhaps victims of the general effects of the Deccan Trap volcanism. If verified in later peer-reviewed publications, DePalma et al’s work would help resolve the gradual vs sudden hypotheses for the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
X-ray and CT images of impact spherules in the gills of a fossil sturgeon from the Tanis K-Pg site, North Dakota (credit DePalma et al. 2019; Fig. 6)
Preston reports some academic scepticism about DePalma’s work, and emphasises his showmanship at conferences; for instance, he named the site ‘Tanis’ after the ancient city in Egypt featured in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are geophysical queries too. If the inundation was by the on-shore effects of a tsunami it doesn’t tally with the abundance of ejecta fallout of glass spherules: tsunamis propagate in shallow seawater at speeds less than 50 km h-1 and more slowly still in channels, whereas impact ejecta travel much faster. This is acknowledged in the paper’s supplement, and the paper refers to a seiche wave activated by seismic waves associated with the Chicxulub impact which could have arrived in North Dakota at about the same time as its ejecta blanket. The paper’s authorship includes the imprimatur of other authorities in different geoscientific fields, including Walter Alvarez, jointly famed with his father Luis for the discovery of the K-Pg boundary horizon and its impact connections in 1981. So it carries considerable weight. No doubt further comment and further papers on the Tanis site will emerge: DePalma has yet to complete his PhD. It may become the lagerstätte of the K-Pg extinction; in DePalma’s words, ‘It’s like finding the Holy Grail clutched in the bony fingers of Jimmy Hoffa, sitting on top of the Lost Ark.’ …
A sign that an earthquake is taking place is pretty obvious: the ground moves. Seismometers are now so sensitive that they record significant seismic events at the far side of the world. The Richter magnitude scale commonly used to assign the power of an event is logarithmic, and the difference between each unit represents an approximately 32-fold change in the energy released at the source, so that a magnitude 6.0 earthquake is 32 times more powerful than one rated as magnitude 5.0. Because seismic motion affects a mass of rock it also perturbs the gravitational field. So, theoretically, gravimeters should also be able to detect an earthquake. Seismic waves travel at a maximum speed of about 6 to 8 km s-1 about 20 times the speed of sound, yet changes in the gravitational field propagate at the speed of light, i.e. almost instantaneously by comparison. The first ground disturbances of the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake of NE Japan on 11 March 2011 hit Tokyo about 2 minutes after the event began offshore. Although that is a quite short time it would be sufficient for people to react and significantly reduce the earthquake’s direct impact on many of them. A seismic gravity signal would give that warning. The full horror of Tohoku-Oki was unleashed by the resulting tsunami waves, whose speed in the deep ocean water off Japan was about 800 km hr-1 (0.22 km s-1). An almost real-time warning would have allowed 40 times more time for evasion.
Devastation in NE Japan caused by the Tohoku-Oki tsunami in March 2011
Japan is particularly well endowed with advanced geophysical equipment because of its notorious seismic and volcanic hazards. The first data to be analysed after Tohoku-Oki were understandably those from Japan’s large array of seismometers. The records from two super-sensitive gravimeters, between 436 and 515 km from the epicentre, were examined only recently. These instruments measure variations in gravity as small as a trillionth of the average gravitational acceleration of the Earth using a superconducting sphere suspended in a magnetic field, capable of detecting snow being cleared from a roof. Masaya Kimura and colleagues from Tokyo University and other geoscientific institutes in Japan undertook the analyses of both seismic and gravity data (Kimura, M. et al. 2019. Earthquake‑induced prompt gravity signals identified in dense array data in Japan. Earth Planets and Space, v. 71, online publication. DOI: 10.1186/s40623-019-1006-x). The gravimeter record did show a statistically significant perturbation at the actual time of the earthquake, albeit after complex processing of both gravity and seismographic data.
That only 2 superconducting gravimeters detected the event in real-time is quite remarkable, despite the need for a great deal of processing. It amounts to a test of the concept that such instruments or others based on different designs and deployed more widely may eventually be deployed to give prompt warnings of seismic events that could save thousands.
The base of the Cambrian has long been defined as the level where abundant shelly fossils and most phyla first occur in the stratigraphic record. That increase in diversity led to the nickname ‘Cambrian Explosion’, despite the fact that sheer numbers and diversity of lesser taxa took a long time to rise to ‘revolutionary’ levels. Yet a great deal of animal evolution was going on during the preceding Proterozoic Era that was revealed once palaeobiological research blossomed in rocks of that age range. Today, the earliest occurrences, or at least hints, of quite a few phyla can be traced to the last 100 Ma of the Precambrian. Clearly, the Cambrian Explosion needs a fresh look now that so many data are in. Any palaeontologist would benefit from reading a Perspective article in the latest issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution (Wood, R. and 8 others 2019. Integrated records of environmental change and evolution challenge the Cambrian Explosion. Nature Ecology & Evolution, v. 3, online publication; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0821-6)
Rachel Wood of Edinburgh University and co-authors working elsewhere in Britain, Canada, Japan and Finland sift the growing wealth of fossil and trace-fossil evidence that predate the start of the Cambrian. They also consider the geochemical events that stand out in the Ediacaran Period that succeeds the Snowball Earth events of the Cryogenian. Their account recognises that the geochemical changes – principally a series of carbon-isotope (δ13C) excursions – may have resulted from tectonic changes. The carbon-isotope data mark a series of short-lived penetrations of oxygen-rich conditions deep into the ocean water column and longer periods of oxygen-starved deep water. Such perturbations in oceanic redox conditions ‘speed-up’ thorough the late-Ediacaran into the Cambrian: a profound and protracted transition from the Neoproterozoic world to that of the Phanerozoic. Over the same time span there is a ‘progressive addition of biological novelty’ in the form and function of the evolving biota, so that each successive assemblage builds on the earlier advances.
The fossil evidence suggests that the earliest Ediacaran fauna was metazoan but with no sign of bilaterian affinities (i.e. having ‘heads’ and ‘tails’). The rise of bilaterians of which most animal phyla are members occupied the later Ediacaran , with the first evidence of locomotion – and almost by definition animals with ‘fore’ and ‘aft’ – being around 560 Ma. Each discrete shift from more to less oxic conditions in the oceans seems to have knocked-back animal life, the reverse being accompanied by diversification of survivors. Oxygenation at the very start of the Cambrian marked the beginnings of a diversification clearly manifested by animals capable of biomineralisation and the secretion of hard parts with clear patterns. Such ‘shelly faunas’ are present in the latest Ediacaran sediments but with a multiplicity of seemingly arbitrary forms, although trace fossils suggest soft-bodied animals did have definite morphological pattern.
Diorama of the Lower Cambrian Qingjiang fauna (Credit: Fu et al. 2019; Fig 4)
Adding yet more information to early metazoan history is the recently discovered Cambrian Qingjiang lagerstätte of Hubei Province in southern China dated at 518 Ma; similar in its exquisite preservation to the Burgess (508 Ma) and Chengjiang (518 Ma) biotas (Fu, D. and 14 others 2019. The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale-type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China. Science, v. 363, p. 1338-1342; DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8800). The two previously discovered Cambrian lagerstättes are notable for their very diverse arthropod and sponge faunas. That at Qingjiang adds an abundance of cnidarians, jellyfish, sea anemones, corals and comb jellies, rare in the other two biotas, plus kinorhynchs or mud dragons – moulting invertebrates known only from Cambrian and modern sediments. The fossils at Qingjiang include only about 8% of the taxa of the same age found at Chengjiang, suggesting different environments
The idea of a sudden, discrete explosive event in the history of life, which coincided with the start of the Cambrian, now seems difficult to support. This should not damage the status of 541 Ma as the start of the Phanerozoic because stratigraphy basically gives form to the passage of time and has done since its emergence in the 19th century, so keeping the names of the divisions is essential to continuity.
Because the configuration of continents inevitably affects the ocean currents that dominate the distribution of heat across the face of the Earth, tectonics has a major influence over climate. So too does the topography of continents, which deflects global wind patterns, and that is also a reflection of tectonic events. For instance, a gap between North and South America allowed exchange of the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans throughout the Cenozoic Era until about 3 Ma ago, at the end of the Pliocene Epoch, although the seaway had long been shallowing as a result of tectonics and volcanism at the destructive margin of the eastern Pacific. That seemingly minor closure transformed the system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly the Gulf Stream, whose waxing and waning were instrumental in the glacial-interglacial cycles that have persisted for the last 2.5 Ma. This was partly through its northward transport of saltier water formed by tropical evaporation that cooling at high northern latitudes encouraged to sink to form a major component of the global oceanic heat conveyor system. Another example is the rise of the Himalaya following India’s collision with Eurasia that gave rise to the monsoonal system dominating the climate of southern Asia. The four huge climatic shifts to all-pervasive ice-house conditions during the Phanerozoic Eon are not explained so simply: one during the late-Ordovician; another in the late-Devonian; a 150 Ma-long glacial epoch spanning much of the Carboniferous and Permian Periods, and the current Ice Age that has lasted since around 34 Ma. Despite having been at the South Pole since the Cretaceous Antarctica didn’t develop glaciers until 34 Ma. So what may have triggered these four major shifts in global climate?
Five palaeoclimatologists from the University of California and MIT set out to find links, starting with the most basic parameter, how atmospheric greenhouse gases might have varied. In the long term CO2 builds up through its emission by volcanoes. It is drawn down by several geological processes: burial of carbon and carbonates formed by living processes; chemical weathering of silicate minerals by CO2 dissolved in water, which forms solid calcium carbonate in soil and carbonate ions in seawater that can be taken up and buried by shell-producing organisms. Rather than comparing gross climate change with periods of orogeny and mountain building, mainly due to continent-continent collisions, they focused on zones that preserve signs of subduction of oceanic lithosphere – suture zones (Macdonald,F.A. et al. 2019. Arc-continent collisions in the tropics set Earth’s climate state. Science, v. 363 (in press); DOI: 10.1126/science.aav5300 ). Comparing the length of all sutures active at different times in the Phanerozoic with the extent of continental ice sheets there is some correlation between active subduction and glaciations, but some major misfits. Selecting only sutures that were active in the tropics of the time – the zone of most intense chemical weathering – results in a far better tectonic-climate connection. Their explanation for this is not tropical weathering of all kinds of exposed rock but of calcium- and magnesium-rich igneous rocks; basaltic and ultramafic rocks. These dominate oceanic lithosphere, which is exposed to weathering mainly where slabs of lithosphere are forced, or obducted, onto continental crust at convergent plate margins to form ophiolite complexes. The Ca- and Mg-rich silicates in them weather quickly to take up CO2 and form carbonates, especially in the tropics. Through such weathering reactions across millions of square kilometres the main greenhouse gas is rapidly pulled out of the atmosphere to set off global cooling.
Top – variation in the total length of active, ophiolite-bearing sutures during the Phanerozoic; middle – length of such sutures in the tropics; bottom – extent of Phanerozoic glaciers. (Credit: Macdonald et al. 2019; Fig.2
Rather than the climatic influence of tectonics through global mountain building, the previous paradigm, Macdonald and colleagues show that the main factor is where subduction and ophiolite obduction were taking place. In turn, this very much depended on the configuration of continents on which ophiolites can be preserved. The most active period of tectonics during the Mesozoic, as recorded by the global length of sutures, was at 250 Ma – the beginning of the Triassic Period – but they were mainly outside the tropics, when there is no sign of contemporary glaciation. During the Ordovician, late-Devonian and Permo-Carboniferous ice-houses active sutures were most concentrated in the tropics. The same goes for the build-up to the current glacial epoch.
As shown by oxygen-isotope records from marine sediments, before about 1.25 Ma global climate cycled between cold and warm episodes roughly every 41 ka. Between 1.25 to 0.7 Ma these glacial-interglacial pulses lengthened to the ~100 ka periods that have characterised the last seven cycles that were also marked by larger volume of Northern Hemisphere ice-sheet cover during glacial maxima. Both periodicities have been empirically linked to regular changes in the Earth’s astronomical behaviour and their effects on the annual amount of energy received from the Sun, as predicted by Milutin Milankovich. As long ago as 1976 early investigation of changes of oxygen isotopes with depth in deep-sea sediments had revealed that their patterns closely matched Milankovich’s hypothesis. The 41 ka periodicity matches the rate at which the Earth’s axial tilt changes, while the ~100 ka signal matches that for variation in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit. 19 and 24 ka cycles were also found in the analysis that reflect those involved in the gyroscope-like precession of the axis of rotation. Surprisingly, the 100 ka cycling follows by far the weakest astronomical effect on solar warming yet the climate fluctuations of the last 700 ka are by far the largest of the last 2.5 million years. In fact the 2 to 8 % changes in solar heat input implicated in the climate cycles are 10 times greater than those predicted even for times when all the astronomical influences act in concert. That and other deviations from Milankovich’s hypothesis suggest that some of Earth’s surface processes act to amplify the astronomical drivers. Moreover, they probably lie behind the mid-Pleistocene transition from 41 to 100 ka cyclicity. What are they? Changes in albedo related to ice- and cloud cover, and shifts in the release and absorption of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are among many suggested factors. As with many geoscientific conundrums, only more and better quality data about changes recorded in sediments that may be proxies for climatic variations are likely to resolve this one.
Adam Hazenfratz of ETH in Zurich and colleagues from several other European countries and the US have compiled details about changing surface- and deep-ocean temperatures and salinity – from δ18O and Mg/Ca ratios in foraminifera shells from a core into Southern Ocean-floor sediments – that go back 1.5 Ma (Hazenfratz, A.P. and 9 others 2019. The residence time of Southern Ocean surface waters and the 100,000-year ice age cycle. Science, v. 363, p. 1080-1084; DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7067). Differences in temperature and salinity (and thus density) gradients show up at different times in this critical sediment record. In turn, they record gross shifts in ocean circulation at high southern latitudes that may have affected the CO2 released from and absorbed by sea water. Specifically, Hazenfratz et al. teased out fluctuations in the rate of mixing of dense, cold and salty water supplied to the Southern Ocean by deep currents with less dense surface water. Cold, dense water is able to dissolve more CO2 than does warmer surface water so that when it forms near the surface at high latitudes it draws down this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and carries it into long-term storage in the deep ocean when it sinks. Deep-water formation therefore tends to force down mean global surface temperature, the more so the longer it resides at depth. When deep water wells to the surface and warms up it releases some of its CO2 content to produce an opposite, warming influence on global climate. So, when mixing of deep and surface waters is enhanced the net result is global warming, whereas if mixing is hindered global climate undergoes cooling.
The Southern Ocean, where most dissolved and gaseous carbon dioxide are emitted and absorbed by seawater (Credit: British Antarctic Survey)
The critical factor in the rate of mixing deep with surface water is the density of that at the surface. When its salinity and density are low the surface water layer acts as a lid on what lies beneath, thereby increasing the residence time of deep water and the CO2 that it contains. This surface ‘freshening’ in the Southern Ocean seems to have begun at around 1.25 Ma and became well established 700 ka ago; that is, during the mid-Pleistocene climate transition. The phenomenon helped to lessen the greenhouse effect after 700 ka so that frigid conditions lasted longer and more glacial ice was able to accumulate, especially on the northern continents. This would have made it more difficult for the 41 ka astronomically paced changes in solar heating to have restored the rate of deep-water mixing to release sufficient CO2 to return the climate to interglacial conditions That would lengthen the glacial-interglacial cycles. The link between the new 100 ka cyclicity and very weak forcing by the varying eccentricity of Earth’s orbit may be fortuitous. So how might anthropogenic global warming affect this process? Increased melting of the Antarctic ice sheet may further freshen surface waters of the Southern Ocean, thereby slowing its mixing with deep, CO2-rich deep water and the release of stored greenhouse gases. As yet, no process leading to the decreased density of surface waters between 1.25 and 0.7 Ma has been suggested, but it seems that something similar may attend global warming.
Predictably, the dialogue between the supporters of the Deccan Trap flood basalts and the Chicxulub impact as triggers that were responsible for the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era (the K-Pg event) continues. A recent issue of Science contains two new approaches focussing on the timing of flood basalt eruptions in western India relative to the age of the Chicxulub impact. One is based on dating the lavas using zircon U-Pb geochronology (Schoene, B. et al. 2019. U-Pb constraints on pulsed eruption of the Deccan Traps across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Science, v. 363, p. 862-866; DOI: 10.1126/science.aau2422), the other using 40Ar/39Ar dating of plagioclase feldspars (Sprain, C.G. et al. 2019. The eruptive tempo of Deccan volcanism in relation to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Science, v. 363, p. 866-870; DOI: 10.1126/science.aav1446). Both studies were initiated for the same reason: previous dating of the sequence of flows in the Deccan Traps was limited by inadequate sampling of the flow sequence and/or high analytical uncertainties. All that could be said with confidence was that the outpouring of more than a million cubic kilometres of plume-related basaltic magma lasted around a million years (65.5 to 66.5 Ma) that encompassed the sudden extinction event and the possibly implicated Chicxulub impact. The age of the impact, as recorded by its iridium-rich ejecta found in sediments of the Denver Basin in Colorado, has been estimated from zircon U-Pb data at 66.016 ± 0.050 Ma; i.e. with a precision of around 50 thousand years.
The Deccan Traps in the Western Ghats of India (Credit: Wikipedia)
Because basalts rarely contain sufficient zircons to estimate a U-Pb age of their eruption, Blair Schoene and colleagues collected them from palaeosols or boles that commonly occur between flows and sometimes incorporate volcanic ash. Their data cover 23 boles and a single zircon-bearing basalt. Sprain et al. obtained 40Ar/39Ar ages from 19 flows, which they used to supplement 5 ages obtained by their team in previous studies that used the same analytical methods and 4 palaeosol ages from an earlier paper by Schoene’s group.
The zircon U-Pb data from palaeosols, combined with estimates of magma volumes that contributed to the lava sequence between each dated stratigraphic level, provide a record of the varying rates at which lavas accumulated. The results suggest four distinct periods of high-volume eruption separated by long. periods of relative quiescence. The second such pulse precedes the K-Pg event by up to 100 ka, the extinction and impact occurring in a period of quiescence. A few tens of thousand years after the event Deccan magmatism rose to its maximum intensity. Schoene’s group consider that this supports the notion that both magmatism and bolide impact drove environmental deterioration that culminated in mass extinction.
The Ar-Ar data derived from the basalt flows themselves, seem to tell a significantly different story. A plot of basalt accumulation, similarly derived from dating and stratigraphy, shows little if any sign of major magmatic pulses and periods of quiescence. Instead, Courtney Sprain’s team distinguish an average eruption rate of around 0.4 km3 per year before the K-Pg event and 0.6 km3 per year following it. Yet they observe from climate proxy data that there seems to have been only minor climatic change (about 2 to 3 °C warming) during the period around and after the K-Pg event when some 75% of the lavas flooded out. Yet during the pre-extinction period of slower effusion global temperature rose by 4°C then fell back to pre-eruption levels immediately before the K-Pg event. This odd mismatch between magma production and climate, based on their data, prompts Sprain et al. to speculate on possible shifts in the emission of climate-changing gases during the period Deccan volcanism: warming by carbon dioxide – either from the magma or older carbon-rich sediments heated by it; cooling induced by stratospheric sulfate aerosols formed by volcanogenic SO2 emissions. That would imply a complex scenario of changes in the composition of gas emissions of either type. They suggest that one conceivable trigger for the post-extinction climate shift may have been exhaustion of the magma source’s sulfur-rich volatile content before the Chicxulub impact added enough energy to the Earth system to generate the massive extrusions that followed it. But their view peters out in a demand for ‘better understanding of [the Deccan Traps’] volatile release’.
A curious case of empiricism seeming to resolve the K-Pg conundrum, on the one hand, yet pushing the resolution further off, on the other …
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