| Title | Anomalous fractionation of mercury isotopes in the Late Archean atmosphere |
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| Author | Zerkle, A L; Yin, R; Chen, C; Li, X; Izon, G J; Grasby, S E |
| Source | Nature Communications vol. 11, issue 1, 1709, 2020 p. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15495-3  Open Access |
| Image |  |
| Year | 2020 |
| Alt Series | Natural Resources Canada, Contribution Series 20200064 |
| Publisher | Nature Research |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper; on-line; digital |
| File format | pdf; html |
| Subjects | environmental geology; Nature and Environment; Science and Technology; mercury; isotopes; Archean; atmospheric geochemistry; sediments; sedimentary rocks; Precambrian |
| Illustrations | plots; figures |
| Program | GEM2: Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals Western Arctic, Pearya Terrane, North Ellesmere |
| Released | 2020 04 06 |
| Abstract | Earth's surface underwent a dramatic transition ~2.3 billion years ago when atmospheric oxygen first accumulated during the Great Oxidation Event, but the detailed composition of the reducing early
atmosphere is not well known. Here we develop mercury (Hg) stable isotopes as a proxy for paleoatmospheric chemistry and use Hg isotope data from 2.5 billion-year-old sedimentary rocks to examine changes in the Late Archean atmosphere immediately
prior to the Great Oxidation Event. These sediments preserve evidence of strong photochemical transformations of mercury in the absence of molecular oxygen. In addition, these geochemical records combined with previously published multi-proxy data
support a vital role for methane in Earth's early atmosphere. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
This paper uses novel tools developed at NRCan to examine the most significant event in Earth history, the transition from and anoxic to the modern oxic
world we live in. While earlier work has tracked this change through the marine environment, how this occurred in the atmosphere is less certain. Results in this study show that the oxygenation of the planet was a complex stepped process. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 326113 |
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