Abstract
A number of 2,000-million-year-old marbles have extraordinarily heavy carbon isotope signatures (δ13C ≈+12%0, PDB) 1,2, suggesting that there was a worldwide excursion in the carbon isotope composition of sea water at this time. To test this hypothesis we have measured the carbon isotope signatures of 2,000-million-year-old amphibolite facies marbles from the Scottish Lewisian. The occurrence of a major isotope excursion is confirmed by the heavy carbon isotope signatures of these rocks (δ13C up to +13%0 PDB), which we attribute to an origin contemporaneous with sedimenta-tion. This excursion coincides with a major change in the redox state of the oceans which is likely to have induced considerable changes in the carbon cycle. We suggest that the excursion was due to increased rates of organic carbon deposition resulting from an increase in organic productivity.
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Baker, A., Fallick, A. Evidence from Lewisian limestones for isotopically heavy carbon in two-thousand-million-year-old sea water. Nature 337, 352–354 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/337352a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/337352a0
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