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Transient marine bottom water oxygenation on continental shelves by 2.65 billion years ago

Nature Geoscience volume 18, pages 423–429 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that molecular oxygen (O2) accumulated in some shallow marine environments beneath the effectively anoxic Archaean atmosphere 4.0 to 2.5 billion years (Ga) ago. Yet, the temporal and spatial distribution of these oxygen oases is not well known. Here we use thallium (Tl) isotope ratios, which are sensitive to manganese oxide burial, to place constraints on the timing and tempo of marine oxygen oases between about 2.65 Ga and 2.50 Ga. Lower-than-crustal authigenic 205Tl/203Tl ratios are common in shales from the approximately 2.65 Ga Jeerinah Formation (Western Australia) and the 2.50 Ga Klein Naute Formation (South Africa). Particularly low 205Tl/203Tl ratios are found at 2.50 Ga, coincident with a pronounced ‘whiff’ of O2. These data can be explained by widespread seafloor manganese oxide burial, a scenario that requires persistent O2 penetration into marine sediments beneath regionally extensive marine oxygen oases. By contrast, 205Tl/203Tl ratios from the 2.60–2.52 Ga Nauga Formation (South Africa) do not deviate from crustal values, suggesting an intervening period of muted seafloor Mn oxide burial. Our data suggest that O2 accumulated over greater spatial extents and to greater depths than previously thought at about 2.65 Ga and that marine oxygenation was spatially and temporally dynamic well before the Great Oxidation Event began at about 2.4 Ga.

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Fig. 1: Geochemical profiles of the Jeerinah Formation in AIDP2 and AIDP3.
Fig. 2: Geochemical profiles of the Klein Naute Formation and Nauga Formation in GKP01 and GKF01.
Fig. 3: Summary of Tl isotope ratio data for the late-Archaean (~2.65 to 2.50 Ga) shales.

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All data related to this manuscript can be found in Supplementary Tables 1–3 and are also available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25212152 (ref. 65).

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Acknowledgements

G. White is thanked for instrumentation troubleshooting at the MagLab. This work was supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration 80NSSC18K1532 (J.D.O.), 19-ICAR19_2-0007 (A.D.A.) and 80NSSC22K1628 (C.M.O. and S.G.N.) and the Sloan Foundation FG-2020–13552 (J.D.O.), and a portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. DMR-1644779 and by the State of Florida.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Xinming Chen

  2. Laboratory of Polar Ecosystem and Climate Change (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China

    Xinming Chen

  3. Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Xinming Chen, Brett J. Holdaway & Jeremy D. Owens

  4. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Chadlin M. Ostrander

  5. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Brian Kendall

  6. School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Ariel D. Anbar

  7. School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Ariel D. Anbar

  8. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Sune G. Nielsen

  9. CRPG, CNRS, Université de Lorraine, Vandoeuvre lès Nancy, France

    Sune G. Nielsen

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Contributions

X.C. and J.D.O. developed the project idea. X.C. and B.J.H. processed samples and performed thallium isotope analyses with contributions from J.D.O. X.C., C.M.O. and J.D.O. wrote the paper with contributions from S.G.N., B.K. and A.D.A.

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Correspondence to Xinming Chen.

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Nature Geoscience thanks James Kasting, Weiqiang Li and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alison Hunt, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2.

Supplementary Tables 1–3

Supplementary Table 1. Iron speciation, Mo concentration, authigenic Tl concentration and isotopic compositions for AIDP2 and AIDP3; iron speciation, Mo and Re concentrations and authigenic Tl concentration and isotopic compositions in GKP01 and GKF01; thallium isotopic compositions in AIDP2, AIDP3, GKP01 and GKF01. Supplementary Table 2. Sulfur isotope data in AIDP2, AIDP3, GKP01 and GKF01. Supplementary Table 3. Tl isotopic compositions in ABDP-9.

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Chen, X., Ostrander, C.M., Holdaway, B.J. et al. Transient marine bottom water oxygenation on continental shelves by 2.65 billion years ago. Nat. Geosci. 18, 423–429 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01681-9

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