Abstract
BECAUSE their molecular signatures are often prominent in extracts of sediments, bacteria are thought to be important contributors to petroleum source beds1. It has been shown recently2,3, however, that abundances of biomarkers do not always reflect relative contributions to sedimentary organic carbon (Corg>). The contribution of photosynthetic green sulphur bacteria to sediments can be assessed effectively because the diagenetic products of distinctive carotenoids from these organisms occur widely4–11 and their biomass is isotopically labelled, being enriched in 13C (refs 12,13). We show here that, although sediments and oils from the Western Canada and Williston basins contain prominent biomarkers of photosynthetic bacteria, the absence of 13C enrichment in the total Corg requires that the bacterial contribution is in fact minimal. Although the importance of bacterial reworking of sedimentary debris cannot be doubted14, we argue that our findings, when considered in conjunction with those from other settings, suggest that bacterial biomass may commonly represent only a minor component of total Corg in carbonaceous rocks.
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Hartgers, W., Sinninghe Damsté, J., Requejo, A. et al. Evidence for only minor contributions from bacteria to sedimentary organic carbon. Nature 369, 224–227 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/369224a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/369224a0
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