[en] The average cell size of marine phytoplankton is critical for the flow of energy and nutrients from the base of the food web to higher trophic levels. Thus, the evolutionary succession of primary producers through Earth’s history is important for our understanding of the radiation of modern protists ∼800 million years ago and the emergence of eumetazoan animals ∼200 million years later. Currently, it is difficult to establish connections between primary production and the proliferation of large and complex organisms because the mid-Proterozoic (∼1,800–800 million years ago) rock record is nearly devoid of recognizable phytoplankton fossils. We report the discovery of intact porphyrins, the molecular fossils of chlorophylls, from 1,100-million-year-old marine black shales of the Taoudeni Basin (Mauritania), 600 million years older than previous findings. The porphyrin nitrogen isotopes (δ15Npor = 5.6–10.2‰) are heavier than in younger sedimentary sequences, and the isotopic offset between sedimentary bulk nitrogen and porphyrins (εpor = −5.1 to −0.5‰) points to cyanobacteria as dominant primary producers. Based on fossil carotenoids, anoxygenic green (Chlorobiacea) and purple sulfur bacteria (Chromatiaceae) also contributed to photosynthate. The low εpor values, in combination with a lack of diagnostic eukaryotic steranes in the time interval of 1,600–1,000 million years ago, demonstrate that algae played an insignificant role in mid-Proterozoic oceans. The paucity of algae and the small cell size of bacterial phytoplankton may have curtailed the flow of energy to higher trophic levels, potentially contributing to a diminished evolutionary pace toward complex eukaryotic ecosystems and large and active organisms.
Disciplines :
Physical, chemical, mathematical & earth Sciences: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
Gueneli, Nur; Australian national University Canberra
McKenna, AC; Florida state university
Ohkouchi; Japan Agency for Marine-earth Science and Technology
FP7 - 308074 - ELITE - Early Life Traces, Evolution, and Implications for Astrobiology
Funders :
BELSPO - Belgian Science Policy Office EU - European Union ARC - Australian Research Council NSF - National Science Foundation ERC - European Research Council
Funding text :
This work was supported in part by Australian Research Council Grants DP1095247 and DP160100607 (to J.J.B.) and by Belgian Science Policy Interuniversity Attraction Pole “PLANET TOPERS” and European Research Council Starting Grant ELiTE FP7/308074 (to E.J.J. and J.B.). A portion of the work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, which is supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant DMR 11-57490 and the State of Florida.
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