Continental configuration controls ocean oxygenation during the Phanerozoic

Alexandre Pohl (), Andy Ridgwell, Richard G. Stockey, Christophe Thomazo, Andrew Keane, Emmanuelle Vennin and Christopher R. Scotese
Additional contact information
Alexandre Pohl: University of California, Riverside
Andy Ridgwell: University of California, Riverside
Richard G. Stockey: Stanford University
Christophe Thomazo: Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté
Andrew Keane: University College Cork
Emmanuelle Vennin: Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté
Christopher R. Scotese: Northwestern University

Nature, 2022, vol. 608, issue 7923, 523-527

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05018-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:608:y:2022:i:7923:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05018-z

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05018-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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