Many black shales, phosphorites, and cherts that formed at low paleolatitudes on the North American continent during the late Paleozoic were a direct consequence of equatorial upwelling and an equatorial undercurrent in an ocean that spanned much of the globe. In equatorial parts of modern oceans, wind stress divergence leads to high surface productivity. Sinking organic matter is remineralized...

Particulate non-lithogenic uranium (PNU), excess U above detrital background levels found in marine particulate matter, is formed in surface waters throughout the ocean. Previous studies have shown that PNU is regenerated completely prior to burial of particles in sediments within well-oxygenated open-ocean regions. However, the fate of PNU has never been examined in ocean margin regions or in ...

The glaciations of the Neoproterozoic Era (1,000 to 542 MyBP) were preceded by dramatically light C isotopic excursions preserved in preglacial deposits. Standard explanations of these excursions involve remineralization of isotopically light organic matter and imply strong enhancement of atmospheric CO(2) greenhouse gas concentration, apparently inconsistent with the glaciations that followed....

the investigated section cropping out in kuh-e-banesh, zagros basin (southern iran) is represented by limestone, cherty beds and marllevels bearing abundant planktonic foraminifers, radiolarian microfaunas, and ammonite imprints. for the first time, well to moderatelypreserved forms of planktonic foraminifera have been extracted from black shale and marls levels. extracted biota was studied wit...

Vast expanses of oxygen-deficient and nitrite-rich water define the major oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) of the global ocean. They support diverse microbial communities that influence the nitrogen economy of the oceans, contributing to major losses of fixed nitrogen as dinitrogen (N(2)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) gases. Anaerobic microbial processes, including the two pathways of N(2) production, d...

Fe speciation and S-isotope of pyrite data from the terminal Proterozoic Sheepbed Formation in Canada and Doushantuo Formation in China reveal that ocean deep waters were anoxic after the global glaciations (snowball Earth) ending 635 million years ago, but that marine sulfate concentrations and inferentially atmospheric oxygen levels were higher than before the glaciations. This supports a lon...

How much dissolved oxygen was present in the mid-Proterozoic oceans between 1.8 and 1.0 billion years ago is debated vigorously. One model argues for oxygenation of the oceans soon after the initial rise of atmospheric oxygen approximately 2.3 billion years ago. Recent evidence for H(2)S in some mid-Proterozoic marine basins suggests, however, that the deep ocean remained anoxic until much late...

The historically productive copper-bearing Besshi-type sulphide deposits in the Japanese accretionary complex were formed as volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits on the deep-sea floor of the Panthalassa Ocean. Here we report that eleven typical Besshi-type deposits yielded Re-Os isochron ages around 150 Ma (148.4 ± 1.4 Ma from the composite isochron) in Late Jurassic time. This date coincides...