The survival of benthic macroscopic phototrophs on a Neoproterozoic snowball Earth

The greatest ice ages in Earth's history occurred during the 654-635 Ma Marinoan glaciation, when glaciers reached tropical oceans and our planet approached a snowball Earth condition. Paleontological and genomic data suggest that several eukaryotic groups must have survived the Marinoan glacia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geology (Boulder) 2015-06, Vol.43 (6), p.507-510
Main Authors: Ye Qin, Ye Qin, Tong Jinnan, Tong Jinnan, Xiao, Shuhai, Zhu Shixing, Zhu Shixing, An Zhihui, An Zhihui, Tian Li, Tian Li, Hu Jun, Hu Jun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
algae
Asia
assemblages
benthic environment
benthic taxa
black shale
carbonaceous composition
China
Chuaria
clastic rocks
depositional environment
diamictite
Ediacaran
Eukaryotes
Far East
Fossils
Geological time
glaciation
Glaciers
ichnofossils
marine environment
Marinoan
microfossils
morphology
Nantuo Formation
Neoproterozoic
Organisms
paleoecology
paleoenvironment
paleolatitude
Paleontology
phototrophs
physiology
Plantae
Precambrian
Proterozoic
sedimentary rocks
sedimentation
Sinian
snowball Earth
southern China
Stratigraphy
Survival analysis
tropical environment
upper Precambrian
Vendotaenia
Yangtze Platform
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Summary:The greatest ice ages in Earth's history occurred during the 654-635 Ma Marinoan glaciation, when glaciers reached tropical oceans and our planet approached a snowball Earth condition. Paleontological and genomic data suggest that several eukaryotic groups must have survived the Marinoan glaciation. But their fossil record is scarce and limited to microbes, whose ecological and physiological ranges are poorly constrained, thus hampering a full understanding of how and where eukaryotic life-particularly macroscopic phototrophs-survived this snowball Earth. Here we report carbonaceous compression fossils from the Marinoan-age Nantuo Formation in South China. These fossils are preserved in thin black shales sandwiched between glacial diamictites deposited in inner shelf environments of the mid-latitudinal Yangtze block. Some of these fossils are interpreted as benthic macroalgae. Thus, the Marinoan glaciation must have been punctuated by episodes of open waters where habitable benthic substrates were available in the photic zone and along the coast of mid-latitudinal continents. Such open waters may have been the refugia where macroscopic phototrophs survived the Marinoan glaciation and subsequently diversified in the early Ediacaran Period.
ISSN:0091-7613
1943-2682
DOI:10.1130/G36640.1