No evidence for high atmospheric oxygen levels 1,400 million years ago

No evidence for high atmospheric oxygen levels 1,400 million years ago

Zhang et al. (1) recently proposed atmospheric oxygen levels of ∼4% present atmospheric levels (PAL) based on modeling a paleoenvironment reconstructed from trace metal and biomarker data from the 1,400 Ma Xiamaling Formation in China. Intriguingly, this pO2 level is above the threshold oxygen requi...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Planavsky, Noah J., Cole, Devon B., Reinhard, Christopher T., Diamond, Charles, Love, Gordon D., Luo, Genming, Zhang, Shuang, Konhauser, Kurt O., Lyons, Timothy W.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109928
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7380-3707
Description
Summary:Zhang et al. (1) recently proposed atmospheric oxygen levels of ∼4% present atmospheric levels (PAL) based on modeling a paleoenvironment reconstructed from trace metal and biomarker data from the 1,400 Ma Xiamaling Formation in China. Intriguingly, this pO2 level is above the threshold oxygen requirements of basal animals and clashes with evidence for atmospheric oxygen levels <<1% PAL in the mid-Proterozoic (2). However, there are fundamental problems with the inorganic and organic geochemical work presented by Zhang et al. (1).

Similar Items