Balance and imbalance in biogeochemical cycles reflect the operation of closed, exchange, and open sets.

Biogeochemical reactions modulate the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere, providing feedbacks that sustain planetary habitability over geological time. Here, we mathematically evaluate a suite of biogeochemical processes to identify combinations of reactions that stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide by balancing fluxes of chemical species among the ocean, atmosphere, and geosphere. Unlike prior modeling efforts, this approach does not prescribe functional relationships between the rates of biogeochemical processes and environmental conditions. Our agnostic framework generates three types of stable reaction combinations: closed sets, where sources and sinks mutually cancel for all chemical reservoirs; exchange sets, where constant ocean-atmosphere conditions are maintained through the growth or destruction of crustal reservoirs; and open sets, where balance in alkalinity and carbon fluxes is accommodated by changes in other chemical components of seawater or the atmosphere. These three modes of operation have different characteristic timescales and may leave distinct evidence in the rock record. To provide a practical example of this theoretical framework, we applied the model to recast existing hypotheses for Cenozoic climate change based on feedbacks or shared forcing mechanisms. Overall, this work provides a systematic and simplified conceptual framework for understanding the function and evolution of global biogeochemical cycles.

Diversity and evolution of nitric oxide reduction in bacteria and archaea.

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas whose production is catalyzed by nitric oxide reductase (NOR) members of the heme-copper oxidoreductase (HCO) enzyme superfamily. We identified several previously uncharacterized HCO families, four of which (eNOR, sNOR, gNOR, and nNOR) appear to perform NO reduction. These families have novel active-site structures and several have conserved proton channels, suggesting that they might be able to couple NO reduction to energy conservation. We isolated and biochemically characterized a member of the eNOR family from the bacterium Rhodothermus marinus and found that it performs NO reduction. These recently identified NORs exhibited broad phylogenetic and environmental distributions, greatly expanding the diversity of microbes in nature capable of NO reduction. Phylogenetic analyses further demonstrated that NORs evolved multiple times independently from oxygen reductases, supporting the view that complete denitrification evolved after aerobic respiration.

Carbon isotope fractionation by an ancestral rubisco suggests that biological proxies for CO2 through geologic time should be reevaluated.

The history of Earth's carbon cycle reflects trends in atmospheric composition convolved with the evolution of photosynthesis. Fortunately, key parts of the carbon cycle have been recorded in the carbon isotope ratios of sedimentary rocks. The dominant model used to interpret this record as a proxy for ancient atmospheric CO2 is based on carbon isotope fractionations of modern photoautotrophs, and longstanding questions remain about how their evolution might have impacted the record. Therefore, we measured both biomass (εp) and enzymatic (εRubisco) carbon isotope fractionations of a cyanobacterial strain (Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942) solely expressing a putative ancestral Form 1B rubisco dating to ≫1 Ga. This strain, nicknamed ANC, grows in ambient pCO2 and displays larger εp values than WT, despite having a much smaller εRubisco (17.23 ± 0.61‰ vs. 25.18 ± 0.31‰, respectively). Surprisingly, ANC εp exceeded ANC εRubisco in all conditions tested, contradicting prevailing models of cyanobacterial carbon isotope fractionation. Such models can be rectified by introducing additional isotopic fractionation associated with powered inorganic carbon uptake mechanisms present in Cyanobacteria, but this amendment hinders the ability to accurately estimate historical pCO2 from geological data. Understanding the evolution of rubisco and the CO2 concentrating mechanism is therefore critical for interpreting the carbon isotope record, and fluctuations in the record may reflect the evolving efficiency of carbon fixing metabolisms in addition to changes in atmospheric CO2.

Trajectories for the evolution of bacterial CO2-concentrating mechanisms.

Cyanobacteria rely on CO2-concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) to grow in today's atmosphere (0.04% CO2). These complex physiological adaptations require ≈15 genes to produce two types of protein complexes: inorganic carbon (Ci) transporters and 100+ nm carboxysome compartments that encapsulate rubisco with a carbonic anhydrase (CA) enzyme. Mutations disrupting any of these genes prohibit growth in ambient air. If any plausible ancestral form-i.e., lacking a single gene-cannot grow, how did the CCM evolve? Here, we test the hypothesis that evolution of the bacterial CCM was "catalyzed" by historically high CO2 levels that decreased over geologic time. Using an E. coli reconstitution of a bacterial CCM, we constructed strains lacking one or more CCM components and evaluated their growth across CO2 concentrations. We expected these experiments to demonstrate the importance of the carboxysome. Instead, we found that partial CCMs expressing CA or Ci uptake genes grew better than controls in intermediate CO2 levels (≈1%) and observed similar phenotypes in two autotrophic bacteria, Halothiobacillus neapolitanus and Cupriavidus necator. To understand how CA and Ci uptake improve growth, we model autotrophy as colimited by CO2 and HCO3-, as both are required to produce biomass. Our experiments and model delineated a viable trajectory for CCM evolution where decreasing atmospheric CO2 induces an HCO3- deficiency that is alleviated by acquisition of CA or Ci uptake, thereby enabling the emergence of a modern CCM. This work underscores the importance of considering physiology and environmental context when studying the evolution of biological complexity.

Oceanic nutrient rise and the late Miocene inception of Pacific oxygen-deficient zones.

The modern Pacific Ocean hosts the largest oxygen-deficient zones (ODZs), where oxygen concentrations are so low that nitrate is used to respire organic matter. The history of the ODZs may offer key insights into ocean deoxygenation under future global warming. In a 12-My record from the southeastern Pacific, we observe a >10‰ increase in foraminifera-bound nitrogen isotopes (15N/14N) since the late Miocene (8 to 9 Mya), indicating large ODZs expansion. Coinciding with this change, we find a major increase in the nutrient content of the ocean, reconstructed from phosphorus and iron measurements of hydrothermal sediments at the same site. Whereas global warming studies cast seawater oxygen concentrations as mainly dependent on climate and ocean circulation, our findings indicate that modern ODZs are underpinned by historically high concentrations of seawater phosphate.

Coal fly ash is a major carbon flux in the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) basin.

Fly ash-the residuum of coal burning-contains a considerable amount of fossilized particulate organic carbon (FOCash) that remains after high-temperature combustion. Fly ash leaks into natural environments and participates in the contemporary carbon cycle, but its reactivity and flux remained poorly understood. We characterized FOCash in the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) basin, China, and quantified the riverine FOCash fluxes. Using Raman spectral analysis, ramped pyrolysis oxidation, and chemical oxidation, we found that FOCash is highly recalcitrant and unreactive, whereas shale-derived FOC (FOCrock) was much more labile and easily oxidized. By combining mass balance calculations and other estimates of fly ash input to rivers, we estimated that the flux of FOCash carried by the Chang Jiang was 0.21 to 0.42 Mt C⋅y-1 in 2007 to 2008-an amount equivalent to 37 to 72% of the total riverine FOC export. We attributed such high flux to the combination of increasing coal combustion that enhances FOCash production and the massive construction of dams in the basin that reduces the flux of FOCrock eroded from upstream mountainous areas. Using global ash data, a first-order estimate suggests that FOCash makes up to 16% of the present-day global riverine FOC flux to the oceans. This reflects a substantial impact of anthropogenic activities on the fluxes and burial of fossil organic carbon that has been made less reactive than the rocks from which it was derived.

An ecophysiological explanation for manganese enrichment in rock varnish.

Desert varnish is a dark rock coating that forms in arid environments worldwide. It is highly and selectively enriched in manganese, the mechanism for which has been a long-standing geological mystery. We collected varnish samples from diverse sites across the western United States, examined them in petrographic thin section using microscale chemical imaging techniques, and investigated the associated microbial communities using 16S amplicon and shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing. Our analyses described a material governed by sunlight, water, and manganese redox cycling that hosts an unusually aerobic microbial ecosystem characterized by a remarkable abundance of photosynthetic Cyanobacteria in the genus Chroococcidiopsis as the major autotrophic constituent. We then showed that diverse Cyanobacteria, including the relevant Chroococcidiopsis taxon, accumulate extraordinary amounts of intracellular manganese-over two orders of magnitude higher manganese content than other cells. The speciation of this manganese determined by advanced paramagnetic resonance techniques suggested that the Cyanobacteria use it as a catalytic antioxidant-a valuable adaptation for coping with the substantial oxidative stress present in this environment. Taken together, these results indicated that the manganese enrichment in varnish is related to its specific uptake and use by likely founding members of varnish microbial communities.

Evolution of the global phosphorus cycle.

The macronutrient phosphorus is thought to limit primary productivity in the oceans on geological timescales. Although there has been a sustained effort to reconstruct the dynamics of the phosphorus cycle over the past 3.5 billion years, it remains uncertain whether phosphorus limitation persisted throughout Earth's history and therefore whether the phosphorus cycle has consistently modulated biospheric productivity and ocean-atmosphere oxygen levels over time. Here we present a compilation of phosphorus abundances in marine sedimentary rocks spanning the past 3.5 billion years. We find evidence for relatively low authigenic phosphorus burial in shallow marine environments until about 800 to 700 million years ago. Our interpretation of the database leads us to propose that limited marginal phosphorus burial before that time was linked to phosphorus biolimitation, resulting in elemental stoichiometries in primary producers that diverged strongly from the Redfield ratio (the atomic ratio of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus found in phytoplankton). We place our phosphorus record in a quantitative biogeochemical model framework and find that a combination of enhanced phosphorus scavenging in anoxic, iron-rich oceans and a nutrient-based bistability in atmospheric oxygen levels could have resulted in a stable low-oxygen world. The combination of these factors may explain the protracted oxygenation of Earth's surface over the last 3.5 billion years of Earth history. However, our analysis also suggests that a fundamental shift in the phosphorus cycle may have occurred during the late Proterozoic eon (between 800 and 635 million years ago), coincident with a previously inferred shift in marine redox states, severe perturbations to Earth's climate system, and the emergence of animals.

Low-gradient, single-threaded rivers prior to greening of the continents.

The Silurian-age rise of land plants is hypothesized to have caused a global revolution in the mechanics of rivers. In the absence of vegetation-controlled bank stabilization effects, pre-Silurian rivers are thought to be characterized by shallow, multithreaded flows, and steep river gradients. This hypothesis, however, is at odds with the pancontinental scale of early Neoproterozoic river systems that would have necessitated extraordinarily high mountains if such river gradients were commonplace at continental scale, which is inconsistent with constraints on lithospheric thickness. To reconcile these observations, we generated estimates of paleogradients and morphologies of pre-Silurian rivers using a well-developed quantitative framework based on the formation of river bars and dunes. We combined data from previous work with original field measurements of the scale, texture, and structure of fluvial deposits in Proterozoic-age Torridonian Group, Scotland-a type-example of pancontinental, prevegetation fluvial systems. Results showed that these rivers were low sloping (gradients 10-5 to 10-4), relatively deep (4 to 15 m), and had morphology similar to modern, lowland rivers. Our results provide mechanistic evidence for the abundance of low gradient, single-threaded rivers in the Proterozoic eon, at a time well before the evolution and radiation of land plants-despite the absence of muddy and vegetated floodplains. Single-threaded rivers with stable floodplains appear to have been a persistent feature of our planet despite singular changes in its terrestrial biota.

Impact of River Channel Lateral Migration on Microbial Communities across a Discontinuous Permafrost Floodplain.

Permafrost soils store approximately twice the amount of carbon currently present in Earth's atmosphere and are acutely impacted by climate change due to the polar amplification of increasing global temperature. Many organic-rich permafrost sediments are located on large river floodplains, where river channel migration periodically erodes and redeposits the upper tens of meters of sediment. Channel migration exerts a first-order control on the geographic distribution of permafrost and floodplain stratigraphy and thus may affect microbial habitats. To examine how river channel migration in discontinuous permafrost environments affects microbial community composition, we used amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene on sediment samples from floodplain cores and exposed riverbanks along the Koyukuk River, a large tributary of the Yukon River in west-central Alaska. Microbial communities are sensitive to permafrost thaw: communities found in deep samples thawed by the river closely resembled near-surface active-layer communities in nonmetric multidimensional scaling analyses but did not resemble floodplain permafrost communities at the same depth. Microbial communities also displayed lower diversity and evenness in permafrost than in both the active layer and permafrost-free point bars recently deposited by river channel migration. Taxonomic assignments based on 16S and quantitative PCR for the methyl coenzyme M reductase functional gene demonstrated that methanogens and methanotrophs are abundant in older permafrost-bearing deposits but not in younger, nonpermafrost point bar deposits. The results suggested that river migration, which regulates the distribution of permafrost, also modulates the distribution of microbes potentially capable of producing and consuming methane on the Koyukuk River floodplain. IMPORTANCE Arctic lowlands contain large quantities of soil organic carbon that is currently sequestered in permafrost. With rising temperatures, permafrost thaw may allow this carbon to be consumed by microbial communities and released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane. We used gene sequencing to determine the microbial communities present in the floodplain of a river running through discontinuous permafrost. We found that the river's lateral movement across its floodplain influences the occurrence of certain microbial communities-in particular, methane-cycling microbes were present on the older, permafrost-bearing eroding riverbank but absent on the newly deposited river bars. Riverbank sediment had microbial communities more similar to those of the floodplain active-layer samples than permafrost samples from the same depth. Therefore, spatial patterns of river migration influence the distribution of microbial taxa relevant to the warming Arctic climate.

Evolution of the 3-hydroxypropionate bicycle and recent transfer of anoxygenic photosynthesis into the Chloroflexi.

Various lines of evidence from both comparative biology and the geologic record make it clear that the biochemical machinery for anoxygenic photosynthesis was present on early Earth and provided the evolutionary stock from which oxygenic photosynthesis evolved ca. 2.3 billion years ago. However, the taxonomic identity of these early anoxygenic phototrophs is uncertain, including whether or not they remain extant. Several phototrophic bacterial clades are thought to have evolved before oxygenic photosynthesis emerged, including the Chloroflexi, a phylum common across a wide range of modern environments. Although Chloroflexi have traditionally been thought to be an ancient phototrophic lineage, genomics has revealed a much greater metabolic diversity than previously appreciated. Here, using a combination of comparative genomics and molecular clock analyses, we show that phototrophic members of the Chloroflexi phylum are not particularly ancient, having evolved well after the rise of oxygen (ca. 867 million years ago), and thus cannot be progenitors of oxygenic photosynthesis. Similarly, results show that the carbon fixation pathway that defines this clade-the 3-hydroxypropionate bicycle-evolved late in Earth history as a result of a series of horizontal gene transfer events, explaining the lack of geological evidence for this pathway based on the carbon isotope record. These results demonstrate the role of horizontal gene transfer in the recent metabolic innovations expressed within this phylum, including its importance in the development of a novel carbon fixation pathway.

MetaPOAP: presence or absence of metabolic pathways in metagenome-assembled genomes.

Summary: Genome-resolved metagenomics allows the construction of draft microbial genomes from short-read shotgun metagenomics (Metagenome-Assembled Genomes, or MAGs); however, even high-quality MAGs are typically somewhat incomplete and contain a small amount of contaminant sequence, making accurate prediction of metabolic potential challenging. Here, we describe MetaPOAP, an algorithm for probabalistic assessment of the statistical likelihoods for the presence or absence of metabolic pathways in MAGs. Availability and implementation: MetaPOAP is available as Python scripts on GitHub or from the Fischer lab webpage, https://github.com/lmward/MetaPOAP. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Four hundred million years of silica biomineralization in land plants.

Biomineralization plays a fundamental role in the global silicon cycle. Grasses are known to mobilize significant quantities of Si in the form of silica biominerals and dominate the terrestrial realm today, but they have relatively recent origins and only rose to taxonomic and ecological prominence within the Cenozoic Era. This raises questions regarding when and how the biological silica cycle evolved. To address these questions, we examined silica abundances of extant members of early-diverging land plant clades, which show that silica biomineralization is widespread across terrestrial plant linages. Particularly high silica abundances are observed in lycophytes and early-diverging ferns. However, silica biomineralization is rare within later-evolving gymnosperms, implying a complex evolutionary history within the seed plants. Electron microscopy and X-ray spectroscopy show that the most common silica-mineralized tissues include the vascular system, epidermal cells, and stomata, which is consistent with the hypothesis that biomineralization in plants is frequently coupled to transpiration. Furthermore, sequence, phylogenetic, and structural analysis of nodulin 26-like intrinsic proteins from diverse plant genomes points to a plastic and ancient capacity for silica accumulation within terrestrial plants. The integration of these two comparative biology approaches demonstrates that silica biomineralization has been an important process for land plants over the course of their >400 My evolutionary history.

SQUID-SIMS is a useful approach to uncover primary signals in the Archean sulfur cycle.

Many aspects of Earth's early sulfur cycle, from the origin of mass-anomalous fractionations to the degree of biological participation, remain poorly understood--in part due to complications from postdepositional diagenetic and metamorphic processes. Using a combination of scanning high-resolution magnetic superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) of sulfur isotopes ((32)S, (33)S, and (34)S), we examined drill core samples from slope and basinal environments adjacent to a major Late Archean (∼2.6-2.5 Ga) marine carbonate platform from South Africa. Coupled with petrography, these techniques can untangle the complex history of mineralization in samples containing diverse sulfur-bearing phases. We focused on pyrite nodules, precipitated in shallow sediments. These textures record systematic spatial differences in both mass-dependent and mass-anomalous sulfur-isotopic composition over length scales of even a few hundred microns. Petrography and magnetic imaging demonstrate that mass-anomalous fractionations were acquired before burial and compaction, but also show evidence of postdepositional alteration 500 million y after deposition. Using magnetic imaging to screen for primary phases, we observed large spatial gradients in Δ(33)S (>4‰) in nodules, pointing to substantial environmental heterogeneity and dynamic mixing of sulfur pools on geologically rapid timescales. In other nodules, large systematic radial δ(34)S gradients (>20‰) were observed, from low values near their centers increasing to high values near their rims. These fractionations support hypotheses that microbial sulfate reduction was an important metabolism in organic-rich Archean environments--even in an Archean ocean basin dominated by iron chemistry.

Real-Time Manganese Phase Dynamics during Biological and Abiotic Manganese Oxide Reduction.

Manganese oxides are often highly reactive and easily reduced, both abiotically, by a variety of inorganic chemical species, and biologically during anaerobic respiration by microbes. To evaluate the reaction mechanisms of these different reduction routes and their potential lasting products, we measured the sequence progression of microbial manganese(IV) oxide reduction mediated by chemical species (sulfide and ferrous iron) and the common metal-reducing microbe Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 under several endmember conditions, using synchrotron X-ray spectroscopic measurements complemented by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy on precipitates collected throughout the reaction. Crystalline or potentially long-lived phases produced in these experiments included manganese(II)-phosphate, manganese(II)-carbonate, and manganese(III)-oxyhydroxides. Major controls on the formation of these discrete phases were alkalinity production and solution conditions such as inorganic carbon and phosphate availability. The formation of a long-lived Mn(III) oxide appears to depend on aqueous Mn(2+) production and the relative proportion of electron donors and electron acceptors in the system. These real-time measurements identify mineralogical products during Mn(IV) oxide reduction, contribute to understanding the mechanism of various Mn(IV) oxide reduction pathways, and assist in interpreting the processes occurring actively in manganese-rich environments and recorded in the geologic record of manganese-rich strata.

Timescales of Oxygenation Following the Evolution of Oxygenic Photosynthesis.

Among the most important bioenergetic innovations in the history of life was the invention of oxygenic photosynthesis-autotrophic growth by splitting water with sunlight-by Cyanobacteria. It is widely accepted that the invention of oxygenic photosynthesis ultimately resulted in the rise of oxygen by ca. 2.35 Gya, but it is debated whether this occurred more or less immediately as a proximal result of the evolution of oxygenic Cyanobacteria or whether they originated several hundred million to more than one billion years earlier in Earth history. The latter hypothesis involves a prolonged period during which oxygen production rates were insufficient to oxidize the atmosphere, potentially due to redox buffering by reduced species such as higher concentrations of ferrous iron in seawater. To examine the characteristic timescales for environmental oxygenation following the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, we applied a simple mathematical approach that captures many of the salient features of the major biogeochemical fluxes and reservoirs present in Archean and early Paleoproterozoic surface environments. Calculations illustrate that oxygenation would have overwhelmed redox buffers within ~100 kyr following the emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis, a geologically short amount of time unless rates of primary production were far lower than commonly expected. Fundamentally, this result arises because of the multiscale nature of the carbon and oxygen cycles: rates of gross primary production are orders of magnitude too fast for oxygen to be masked by Earth's geological buffers, and can only be effectively matched by respiration at non-negligible O2 concentrations. These results suggest that oxygenic photosynthesis arose shortly before the rise of oxygen, not hundreds of millions of years before it.

Manganese-oxidizing photosynthesis before the rise of cyanobacteria.

The emergence of oxygen-producing (oxygenic) photosynthesis fundamentally transformed our planet; however, the processes that led to the evolution of biological water splitting have remained largely unknown. To illuminate this history, we examined the behavior of the ancient Mn cycle using newly obtained scientific drill cores through an early Paleoproterozoic succession (2.415 Ga) preserved in South Africa. These strata contain substantial Mn enrichments (up to ∼17 wt %) well before those associated with the rise of oxygen such as the ∼2.2 Ga Kalahari Mn deposit. Using microscale X-ray spectroscopic techniques coupled to optical and electron microscopy and carbon isotope ratios, we demonstrate that the Mn is hosted exclusively in carbonate mineral phases derived from reduction of Mn oxides during diagenesis of primary sediments. Additional observations of independent proxies for O2--multiple S isotopes (measured by isotope-ratio mass spectrometry and secondary ion mass spectrometry) and redox-sensitive detrital grains--reveal that the original Mn-oxide phases were not produced by reactions with O2, which points to a different high-potential oxidant. These results show that the oxidative branch of the Mn cycle predates the rise of oxygen, and provide strong support for the hypothesis that the water-oxidizing complex of photosystem II evolved from a former transitional photosystem capable of single-electron oxidation reactions of Mn.

Manganese and the Evolution of Photosynthesis.

Oxygenic photosynthesis is the most important bioenergetic event in the history of our planet-it evolved once within the Cyanobacteria, and remained largely unchanged as it was transferred to algae and plants via endosymbiosis. Manganese plays a fundamental role in this history because it lends the critical redox behavior of the water-oxidizing complex of photosystem II. Constraints from the photoassembly of the Mn-bearing water-oxidizing complex fuel the hypothesis that Mn(II) once played a key role as an electron donor for anoxygenic photosynthesis prior to the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Here we review the growing body of geological and geochemical evidence from the Archean and Paleoproterozoic sedimentary records that supports this idea and demonstrates that the oxidative branch of the Mn cycle switched on prior to the rise of oxygen. This Mn-oxidizing phototrophy hypothesis also receives support from the biological record of extant phototrophs, and can be made more explicit by leveraging constraints from structural biology and biochemistry of photosystem II in Cyanobacteria. These observations highlight that water-splitting in photosystem II evolved independently from a homodimeric ancestral type II reaction center capable of high potential photosynthesis and Mn(II) oxidation, which is required by the presence of homologous redox-active tyrosines in the modern heterodimer. The ancestral homodimer reaction center also evolved a C-terminal extension that sterically precluded standard phototrophic electron donors like cytochrome c, cupredoxins, or high-potential iron-sulfur proteins, and could only complete direct oxidation of small molecules like Mn(2+), and ultimately water.

Climate change and the selective signature of the Late Ordovician mass extinction.

Selectivity patterns provide insights into the causes of ancient extinction events. The Late Ordovician mass extinction was related to Gondwanan glaciation; however, it is still unclear whether elevated extinction rates were attributable to record failure, habitat loss, or climatic cooling. We examined Middle Ordovician-Early Silurian North American fossil occurrences within a spatiotemporally explicit stratigraphic framework that allowed us to quantify rock record effects on a per-taxon basis and assay the interplay of macrostratigraphic and macroecological variables in determining extinction risk. Genera that had large proportions of their observed geographic ranges affected by stratigraphic truncation or environmental shifts at the end of the Katian stage were particularly hard hit. The duration of the subsequent sampling gaps had little effect on extinction risk, suggesting that this extinction pulse cannot be entirely attributed to rock record failure; rather, it was caused, in part, by habitat loss. Extinction risk at this time was also strongly influenced by the maximum paleolatitude at which a genus had previously been sampled, a macroecological trait linked to thermal tolerance. A model trained on the relationship between 16 explanatory variables and extinction patterns during the early Katian interval substantially underestimates the extinction of exclusively tropical taxa during the late Katian interval. These results indicate that glacioeustatic sea-level fall and tropical ocean cooling played important roles in the first pulse of the Late Ordovician mass extinction in Laurentia.

Sulfur isotopes of organic matter preserved in 3.45-billion-year-old stromatolites reveal microbial metabolism.

The 3.45-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation of Western Australia preserves stromatolites that are considered among the oldest evidence for life on Earth. In places of exceptional preservation, these stromatolites contain laminae rich in organic carbon, interpreted as the fossil remains of ancient microbial mats. To better understand the biogeochemistry of these rocks, we performed microscale in situ sulfur isotope measurements of the preserved organic sulfur, including both Δ(33)S and . This approach allows us to tie physiological inference from isotope ratios directly to fossil biomass, providing a means to understand sulfur metabolism that is complimentary to, and independent from, inorganic proxies (e.g., pyrite). Δ(33)S values of the kerogen reveal mass-anomalous fractionations expected of the Archean sulfur cycle, whereas values show large fractionations at very small spatial scales, including values below -15‰. We interpret these isotopic patterns as recording the process of sulfurization of organic matter by H(2)S in heterogeneous mat pore-waters influenced by respiratory S metabolism. Positive Δ(33)S anomalies suggest that disproportionation of elemental sulfur would have been a prominent microbial process in these communities.