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Vermeij GJ. The illusion of balance in the history of the biosphere. GEOBIOLOGY 2024; 22:e12584. [PMID: 38385604 DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12584] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2023] [Revised: 12/15/2023] [Accepted: 01/03/2024] [Indexed: 02/23/2024]
Abstract
Earth's surface has been irreversibly altered by the activity of organisms, a process that has accelerated as the power of the biosphere (the rate at which life extracts and deploys energy) has increased over time. This trend is incompatible with the expectation that the inputs to Earth's surface of life's materials from the crust and mantle be matched by export from Earth's surface to long-term reservoirs. Here, I suggest that the collective activity of organisms has always violated this balance. The biosphere's ability to extract, retain, recycle, and accumulate materials has allowed living biomass to increase and for exports to decrease over very long timescales. This collective metabolism implies a net transfer of materials from the planet's interior to its surface. The combination of metabolic innovations, competition, adaptive evolution, and the establishment of collaborative economic feedback in ecosystems created dynamic ecological stability despite great spatial and temporal heterogeneity in physical and biological inputs and export of nutrients into and out of the biosphere. Models of geochemical cycling must take the fundamental role of living organisms and the evolutionary changes in these roles into account to explain past and future conditions.
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Wu Y, Cui Y, Chu D, Song H, Tong J, Dal Corso J, Ridgwell A. Volcanic CO 2 degassing postdates thermogenic carbon emission during the end-Permian mass extinction. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2023; 9:eabq4082. [PMID: 36791190 PMCID: PMC9931219 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq4082] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2022] [Accepted: 01/18/2023] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
Massive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are widely assumed to be the driver of the end-Permian mass extinction (EPME). However, the rate of and total CO2 released, and whether the source changes with time, remain poorly understood, leaving a key question surrounding the trigger for the EPME unanswered. Here, we assimilate reconstructions of atmospheric Pco2 and carbonate δ13C in an Earth system model to unravel the history of carbon emissions and sources across the EPME. We infer a transition from a CO2 source with a thermogenic carbon isotopic signature associated with a slower emission rate to a heavier, more mantle-dominated volcanic source with an increased rate of emissions. This implies that the CO2 degassing style changed as the Siberian Traps emplacement evolved, which is consistent with geochemical proxy records. Carbon cycle feedbacks from terrestrial ecosystem disturbances may have further amplified the warming and the severity of marine extinctions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuyang Wu
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
- Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA
| | - Ying Cui
- Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA
| | - Daoliang Chu
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
| | - Haijun Song
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
| | - Jinnan Tong
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
| | - Jacopo Dal Corso
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
| | - Andy Ridgwell
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
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Sperling EA, Boag TH, Duncan MI, Endriga CR, Marquez JA, Mills DB, Monarrez PM, Sclafani JA, Stockey RG, Payne JL. Breathless through Time: Oxygen and Animals across Earth's History. THE BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 2022; 243:184-206. [PMID: 36548971 DOI: 10.1086/721754] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
AbstractOxygen levels in the atmosphere and ocean have changed dramatically over Earth history, with major impacts on marine life. Because the early part of Earth's history lacked both atmospheric oxygen and animals, a persistent co-evolutionary narrative has developed linking oxygen change with changes in animal diversity. Although it was long believed that oxygen rose to essentially modern levels around the Cambrian period, a more muted increase is now believed likely. Thus, if oxygen increase facilitated the Cambrian explosion, it did so by crossing critical ecological thresholds at low O2. Atmospheric oxygen likely remained at low or moderate levels through the early Paleozoic era, and this likely contributed to high metazoan extinction rates until oxygen finally rose to modern levels in the later Paleozoic. After this point, ocean deoxygenation (and marine mass extinctions) is increasingly linked to large igneous province eruptions-massive volcanic carbon inputs to the Earth system that caused global warming, ocean acidification, and oxygen loss. Although the timescales of these ancient events limit their utility as exact analogs for modern anthropogenic global change, the clear message from the geologic record is that large and rapid CO2 injections into the Earth system consistently cause the same deadly trio of stressors that are observed today. The next frontier in understanding the impact of oxygen changes (or, more broadly, temperature-dependent hypoxia) in deep time requires approaches from ecophysiology that will help conservation biologists better calibrate the response of the biosphere at large taxonomic, spatial, and temporal scales.
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Continental flood basalts drive Phanerozoic extinctions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2120441119. [PMID: 36095185 PMCID: PMC9499591 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2120441119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Refinements of the geological timescale driven by the increasing precision and accuracy of radiometric dating have revealed an apparent correlation between large igneous provinces (LIPs) and intervals of Phanerozoic faunal turnover that has been much discussed at a qualitative level. However, the extent to which such correlations are likely to occur by chance has yet to be quantitatively tested, and other kill mechanisms have been suggested for many mass extinctions. Here, we show that the degree of temporal correlation between continental LIPs and faunal turnover in the Phanerozoic is unlikely to occur by chance, suggesting a causal relationship linking extinctions and continental flood basalts. The relationship is stronger for LIPs with higher estimated eruptive rates and for stage boundaries with higher extinction magnitudes. This suggests LIP magma degassing as a primary kill mechanism for mass extinctions and other intervals of faunal turnover, which may be related to [Formula: see text], Cl, and F release. Our results suggest continental LIPs as a major, direct driver of extinctions throughout the Phanerozoic.
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Continental configuration controls ocean oxygenation during the Phanerozoic. Nature 2022; 608:523-527. [PMID: 35978129 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05018-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2021] [Accepted: 06/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
The early evolutionary and much of the extinction history of marine animals is thought to be driven by changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations ([O2]) in the ocean1-3. In turn, [O2] is widely assumed to be dominated by the geological history of atmospheric oxygen (pO2)4,5. Here, by contrast, we show by means of a series of Earth system model experiments how continental rearrangement during the Phanerozoic Eon drives profound variations in ocean oxygenation and induces a fundamental decoupling in time between upper-ocean and benthic [O2]. We further identify the presence of state transitions in the global ocean circulation, which lead to extensive deep-ocean anoxia developing in the early Phanerozoic even under modern pO2. Our finding that ocean oxygenation oscillates over stable thousand-year (kyr) periods also provides a causal mechanism that might explain elevated rates of metazoan radiation and extinction during the early Palaeozoic Era6. The absence, in our modelling, of any simple correlation between global climate and ocean ventilation, and the occurrence of profound variations in ocean oxygenation independent of atmospheric pO2, presents a challenge to the interpretation of marine redox proxies, but also points to a hitherto unrecognized role for continental configuration in the evolution of the biosphere.
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Dimitrov D, Neves DM, Xu X. Editorial: Temporal and Large-Scale Spatial Patterns of Plant Diversity and Diversification. Front Ecol Evol 2022. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2022.894234] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Abstract
AbstractAnimals, fungi, and algae with complex multicellular bodies all evolved independently from unicellular ancestors. The early history of these major eukaryotic multicellular clades, if not their origins, co-occur with an extreme phase of global glaciations known as the Snowball Earth. Here, I propose that the long-term loss of low-viscosity environments due to several rounds global glaciation drove the multiple origins of complex multicellularity in eukaryotes and the subsequent radiation of complex multicellular groups into previously unoccupied niches. In this scenario, life adapts to Snowball Earth oceans by evolving large size and faster speeds through multicellularity, which acts to compensate for high-viscosity seawater and achieve fluid flow at sufficient levels to satisfy metabolic needs. Warm, low-viscosity seawater returned with the melting of the Snowball glaciers, and with it, by virtue of large and fast multicellular bodies, new ways of life were unveiled.
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Decreasing Phanerozoic extinction intensity as a consequence of Earth surface oxygenation and metazoan ecophysiology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2021; 118:2101900118. [PMID: 34607946 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101900118] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/26/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The decline in background extinction rates of marine animals through geologic time is an established but unexplained feature of the Phanerozoic fossil record. There is also growing consensus that the ocean and atmosphere did not become oxygenated to near-modern levels until the mid-Paleozoic, coinciding with the onset of generally lower extinction rates. Physiological theory provides us with a possible causal link between these two observations-predicting that the synergistic impacts of oxygen and temperature on aerobic respiration would have made marine animals more vulnerable to ocean warming events during periods of limited surface oxygenation. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that changes in surface oxygenation exerted a first-order control on extinction rates through the Phanerozoic using a combined Earth system and ecophysiological modeling approach. We find that although continental configuration, the efficiency of the biological carbon pump in the ocean, and initial climate state all impact the magnitude of modeled biodiversity loss across simulated warming events, atmospheric oxygen is the dominant predictor of extinction vulnerability, with metabolic habitat viability and global ecophysiotype extinction exhibiting inflection points around 40% of present atmospheric oxygen. Given this is the broad upper limit for estimates of early Paleozoic oxygen levels, our results are consistent with the relative frequency of high-magnitude extinction events (particularly those not included in the canonical big five mass extinctions) early in the Phanerozoic being a direct consequence of limited early Paleozoic oxygenation and temperature-dependent hypoxia responses.
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Wood R, Donoghue PCJ, Lenton TM, Liu AG, Poulton SW. The origin and rise of complex life: progress requires interdisciplinary integration and hypothesis testing. Interface Focus 2020. [DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2020.0024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Understanding of the triggers and timing of the rise of complex life
ca
2100 to 720 million years ago has expanded dramatically in recent years. This theme issue brings together diverse and novel geochemical and palaeontological data presented as part of the Royal Society ‘
The origin and rise of complex life: integrating models
,
geochemical and palaeontological data
’ discussion meeting held in September 2019. The individual papers offer prescient insights from multiple disciplines. Here we summarize their contribution towards the goal of the meeting; to create testable hypotheses for the differing roles of changing climate, oceanic redox, nutrient availability, and ecosystem feedbacks across this profound, but enigmatic, transitional period.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel Wood
- School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FE, UK
| | | | | | - Alexander G. Liu
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK
| | - Simon W. Poulton
- School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
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