Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of a Neoarchean oxygen oasis

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URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10900/79800
http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-dspace-798001
http://dx.doi.org/10.15496/publikation-21196
Dokumentart: PhDThesis
Date: 2018-01-16
Language: English
Faculty: 7 Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Department: Geographie, Geoökologie, Geowissenschaft
Advisor: Schönberg, Ronny (Prof. Dr.)
Day of Oral Examination: 2016-10-27
DDC Classifikation: 550 - Earth sciences
Keywords: Isotopengeochemie , Carbonate , Carbonatplattform
License: http://tobias-lib.uni-tuebingen.de/doku/lic_ohne_pod.php?la=de http://tobias-lib.uni-tuebingen.de/doku/lic_ohne_pod.php?la=en
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Abstract:

The Neoarchean-Paleoproterozoic Transvaal Supergroup in South Africa contains the Campbellrand-Malmani carbonate platform (CMCP), which was deposited in shallow seawater between ~2.58 to 2.50 billion years ago, about 200 million years before the rise of atmospheric oxygen (Great Oxidation Event - GOE). The platform is a prominent candidate for (isotope-) geochemical mapping to investigate the appearance of very small amounts of free oxygen that accumulated in shallow seawater preceding the GOE. Thus, the CMCP might represent an Archean ‘oxygen oasis’ in an otherwise anoxic environment. Carbon, molybdenum, and iron isotope compositions of CMCP sediments support the presence of molecular oxygen in the shallow-marine system and emphasize the utility of Ca-Mg carbonates as proxies for trace metal systematics in the aqueous environment. However, this study also shows that special environmental and depositional conditions were necessary to induce this development, in particular the formation of the rimmed margin and the restriction of the platform interior from the open ocean. In this restricted environment, oxygen production by aerobe photosynthesis could have increased relative to oxygen consumption by reducing species and induced an increasing oxidation of the shallow-marine environment over time.

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