Iron minerals within specific microfossil morphospecies of the 1.88 Ga Gunflint Formation

Kevin Lepot (), Ahmed Addad, Andrew H. Knoll, Jian Wang, David Troadec, Armand Béché and Emmanuelle J. Javaux
Additional contact information
Kevin Lepot: Laboratoire d’Océanologie et de Géosciences, Université de Lille, CNRS UMR8187
Ahmed Addad: Unité Matériaux et Transformations, Université de Lille, CNRS UMR8207
Andrew H. Knoll: Harvard University
Jian Wang: Canadian Light Source Inc., University of Saskatchewan
David Troadec: Institut d’Electronique, de Micro-électronique et de Nanotechnologie, CNRS UMR8520
Armand Béché: Electron Microscopy for Material Science, University of Antwerp
Emmanuelle J. Javaux: Paléobiogéologie, Paléobotanique & Paléopalynologie, UR Geology, Université de Liège

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Problematic microfossils dominate the palaeontological record between the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago (Ga) and the last Palaeoproterozoic iron formations, deposited 500–600 million years later. These fossils are often associated with iron-rich sedimentary rocks, but their affinities, metabolism, and, hence, their contributions to Earth surface oxidation and Fe deposition remain unknown. Here we show that specific microfossil populations of the 1.88 Ga Gunflint Iron Formation contain Fe-silicate and Fe-carbonate nanocrystal concentrations in cell interiors. Fe minerals are absent in/on all organically preserved cell walls. These features are consistent with in vivo intracellular Fe biomineralization, with subsequent in situ recrystallization, but contrast with known patterns of post-mortem Fe mineralization. The Gunflint populations that display relatively large cells (thick-walled spheres, filament-forming rods) and intra-microfossil Fe minerals are consistent with oxygenic photosynthesizers but not with other Fe-mineralizing microorganisms studied so far. Fe biomineralization may have protected oxygenic photosynthesizers against Fe2+ toxicity during the Palaeoproterozoic.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14890 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms14890

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14890

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().