Description: Major climate changes and mass extinctions are associated with carbon isotope anomalies in the atmosphere-ocean system and have been shown to coincide with the onset of large igneous provinces (LIPs) and, by association, their emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. However, climatic and biological consequences of some known LIP eruptions have not yet been explored. During the Carnian (Late Triassic) large volumes of flood basalts were erupted to form the so-called Wrangellia LIP (western North America). This huge volcanic province is similar in age to a major climatic and biotic change, the Carnian Pluvial Event (CPE), but no evidence of a causal relationship exists other than timing. Here we report a sharp negative d13C excursion at the onset of the CPE recorded in organic matter. An abrupt carbon isotope excursion of ~-4‰ occurs in terrestrial and marine fossil molecules, whereas total organic carbon records an ~-2‰ shift. We propose that this carbon isotope negative shift was caused by an injection of light carbon into the atmosphere-ocean system linked to the eruption of Wrangellia flood basalts. This carbon-cycle perturbation occurs slightly before two major evolutionary innovations: the origin of dinosaurs and calcareous nannoplankton.

Description: Saline alkaline sediments and soils are widespread in arid and semiarid regions, but their occurrence in ancient dry periods remains unknown due to the lack of a suitable proxy. On the basis of investigations of modern Chinese soils with a wide pH range of 3.5–9.1, we suggest that the microbial lipid ratio Ri/b, i.e., the abundance ratio of archaeal isoprenoid GDGTs (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers) to bacterial branched GDGTs, indicates the presence of drought-induced alkaline deposits in terrestrial settings. The Ri/b is invariant in modern soils with pH 〈 7.5 and when the local mean annual precipitation 〉600 mm, but it increases sharply at higher pH values and lower mean annual precipitation (

Description: © The Author(s), 2012. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS Biology 10 (2012): e1001234, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001234.

Description: Since the first discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Galápagos Rift in 1977, numerous vent sites and endemic faunal assemblages have been found along mid-ocean ridges and back-arc basins at low to mid latitudes. These discoveries have suggested the existence of separate biogeographic provinces in the Atlantic and the North West Pacific, the existence of a province including the South West Pacific and Indian Ocean, and a separation of the North East Pacific, North East Pacific Rise, and South East Pacific Rise. The Southern Ocean is known to be a region of high deep-sea species diversity and centre of origin for the global deep-sea fauna. It has also been proposed as a gateway connecting hydrothermal vents in different oceans but is little explored because of extreme conditions. Since 2009 we have explored two segments of the East Scotia Ridge (ESR) in the Southern Ocean using a remotely operated vehicle. In each segment we located deep-sea hydrothermal vents hosting high-temperature black smokers up to 382.8°C and diffuse venting. The chemosynthetic ecosystems hosted by these vents are dominated by a new yeti crab (Kiwa n. sp.), stalked barnacles, limpets, peltospiroid gastropods, anemones, and a predatory sea star. Taxa abundant in vent ecosystems in other oceans, including polychaete worms (Siboglinidae), bathymodiolid mussels, and alvinocaridid shrimps, are absent from the ESR vents. These groups, except the Siboglinidae, possess planktotrophic larvae, rare in Antarctic marine invertebrates, suggesting that the environmental conditions of the Southern Ocean may act as a dispersal filter for vent taxa. Evidence from the distinctive fauna, the unique community structure, and multivariate analyses suggest that the Antarctic vent ecosystems represent a new vent biogeographic province. However, multivariate analyses of species present at the ESR and at other deep-sea hydrothermal vents globally indicate that vent biogeography is more complex than previously recognised.

Description: The ChEsSo research programme was funded by a NERC Consortium Grant (NE/DO1249X/1) and supported by the Census of Marine Life and the Sloan Foundation, and the Total Foundation for Biodiversity (Abyss 2100)(SVTH) all of which are gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge NSF grant ANT-0739675 (CG and TS), NERC PhD studentships NE/D01429X/1(LH, LM, CNR), NE/H524922/1(JH) and NE/F010664/1 (WDKR), a Cusanuswerk doctoral fellowship, and a Lesley & Charles Hilton-Brown Scholarship, University of St. Andrews (PHBS).

Description: Here we present orbitally-resolved records of terrestrial higher plant leaf wax input to the North Atlantic over the last 3.5 Ma, based on the accumulation of long-chain n-alkanes and n-alkanl-1-ols at IODP Site U1313. These lipids are a major component of dust, even in remote ocean areas, and have a predominantly aeolian origin in distal marine sediments. Our results demonstrate that around 2.7 million years ago (Ma), coinciding with the intensification of the Northern Hemisphere glaciation (NHG), the aeolian input of terrestrial material to the North Atlantic increased drastically. Since then, during every glacial the aeolian input of higher plant material was up to 30 times higher than during interglacials. The close correspondence between aeolian input to the North Atlantic and other dust records indicates a globally uniform response of dust sources to Quaternary climate variability, although the amplitude of variation differs among areas. We argue that the increased aeolian input at Site U1313 during glacials is predominantly related to the episodic appearance of continental ice sheets in North America and the associated strengthening of glaciogenic dust sources. Evolutional spectral analyses of the n-alkane records were therefore used to determine the dominant astronomical forcing in North American ice sheet advances. These results demonstrate that during the early Pleistocene North American ice sheet dynamics responded predominantly to variations in obliquity (41 ka), which argues against previous suggestions of precession-related variations in Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during the early Pleistocene.

Description: To examine the Late Neogene evolution of tropical Pacific oceanography, we determined multiple geochemical proxy records for temperature (UK37' and TEX86H indices) and primary productivity (algal biomarkers and diol indices) in sediments recovered at ODP Site 1241 in the East Equatorial Pacific (EEP) spanning a record of the last 10 Myr. The TEX86H temperatures are lower than those recorded by UK37' indices, exhibiting large fluctuations and suggesting strong warming during the Mid Pliocene Warm Period (MPWP; 4.5-3.2 Ma) and significantly colder temperature during the Late Miocene cooling period (7-5 Ma) and after the Middle Pliocene Warm Period (MPWP). Such variations could reflect changes in the EEP thermocline temperatures, but we suggest that they instead reflect changes in the depth of export production of glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether lipids in response to changes in the upper ocean structure. A combination of temperature records, inferred to represent different and likely varying depths in the water column, as well as algal biomarker records for export production and ecosystem structure, suggest that both productivity and inference upwelling were reduced in the EEP during warmer periods, such as the MPWP and prior to 7 Ma. In contrast, stronger upwelling conditions and associated increased productivity likely prevailed from 7 to 5 Ma and for the past 3 Myr, both corresponding to globally cool intervals. A further increase in EEP productivity occurred at ca 1.8 Ma, coincident with the development of the E-W Pacific SST gradient. These results confirm previous work that protracted El Niño-like conditions prevailed during warmer intervals of the Pliocene before ultimately descending into the current climate state.