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Published Online February 2, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1118929

Reports

Submitted on August 16, 2005
Accepted on December 13, 2005

Late Precambrian Oxygenation; Inception of the Clay Mineral Factory

Martin Kennedy 1, Mary Droser 1, Lawrence M. Mayer 2, David Pevear 1, David Mrofka 1

1 Department of Earth Science, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA.
2 Darling Marine Center, University of Maine, Walpole ME 04573 USA.

An enigmatic stepwise increase in oxygen in the late Precambrian is widely considered a prerequisite for the expansion of animal life. Accumulation of oxygen requires organic matter burial in sediments, which is largely controlled by the sheltering or preservation by detrital clay minerals in modern marine continental margin depocenters. Here we show mineralogical and geochemical evidence for an increase in clay mineral deposition in the Neoproterozoic that immediately predated the first metazoans. Today most clay minerals originate in biologically active soils, so initial expansion of a primitive land biota would greatly enhance production of pedogenic clay minerals (the "clay mineral factory"), leading to increased marine burial of organic carbon via mineral surface preservation.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)