The geologic history of marine dissolved organic carbon from iron oxides

作者：Nir Galili, Stefano M. Bernasconi, Alon Nissan, Uria Alcolombri, Giorgia Aquila, Marcella Di Bella, Thomas M. Blattmann, Negar Haghipour, Francesco Italiano, Madalina Jaggi, Ifat Kaplan‐Ashiri, Kang Soo Lee, Maxwell Lechte, Cara Magnabosco, Susannah M. Porter, Maxim Rudmin, Robert G. M. Spencer, Roman Stocker, Zhe Wang, Stephan Wohlwend, Jordon Hemingway · 发表于：Nature · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41586-025-09383-3 · 被引用次数：21 · 研究领域：Marine and coastal ecosystems、Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils、Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

Abstract Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is the largest reduced carbon reservoir in modern oceans 1,2 . Its dynamics regulate marine communities and atmospheric CO 2 levels 3,4 , whereas 13 C compositions track ecosystem structure and autotrophic metabolism 5 . However, the geologic history of marine DOC remains largely unconstrained 6,7 , limiting our ability to mechanistically reconstruct coupled ecological and biogeochemical evolution. Here we develop and validate a direct proxy for past DOC signatures using co-precipitated organic carbon in iron ooids. We apply this to 26 marine iron ooid-containing formations deposited over the past 1,650 million years to generate a data-based reconstruction of marine DOC signals since the Palaeoproterozoic. Our predicted DOC concentrations were near modern levels in the Palaeoproterozoic, then decreased by 90−99% in the Neoproterozoic before sharply rising in the Cambrian. We interpret these dynamics to reflect three distinct states. The occurrence of mostly small, single-celled organisms combined with severely hypoxic deep oceans, followed by larger, more complex organisms and little change in ocean oxygenation and finally continued organism growth and a transition to fully oxygenated oceans 8,9 . Furthermore, modern DOC is 13 C-enriched relative to the Proterozoic, possibly because of changing autotrophic carbon-isotope fractionation driven by biological innovation. Our findings reflect connections between the carbon cycle, ocean oxyge...