Sedimentology articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • Brief Communication
    | Open Access

    Analysis of changes in the Earth’s rotation in the Precambrian suggests that day length stabilized at 19 h for 1 billion years due to tidal resonance, which may have been linked to a relatively quiescent period of tectonic activity and biological evolution.

    • Ross N. Mitchell
    •  & Uwe Kirscher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mixing dynamics at river confluences where shallow flows merge in rivers consist of switching between wake and mixing-layer modes, as shown in theoretical and field-scale physical modelling.

    • A. N. Sukhodolov
    • , O. O. Shumilova
    •  & B. L. Rhoads

  • News & Views |

    The colonization of Earth landmasses by vascular plants around 430 million years ago substantially impacted erosion and sediment transport mechanisms. This left behind fingerprints in magmatic rocks, linking the evolution of Earth’s biosphere with its internal processes.

    • Nicolas D. Greber

  • Article |

    Colonization of continents by plants some 430 Myr ago enhanced the complexity of weathering and sedimentary systems, and altered the composition of continental crust, according to statistical assessment of zircon compositions.

    • Christopher J. Spencer
    • , Neil S. Davies
    •  & Gui-Mei Lu

  • Article |

    Drainage divides between coastal plain channel networks can be constructed through depositional, rather than erosional, processes according to a lidar-based topographic analysis of the Gulf of Mexico coastal plain.

    • John M. Swartz
    • , Benjamin T. Cardenas
    •  & Paola Passalacqua

  • Article |

    The Philippine Sea/Pacific boundary megathrust is another possible source of seismic hazard in the Tokyo Region and tsunamis in the Pacific, according to an assessment of 1,000 years of tsunami deposits along the Japanese coastline.

    • Jessica E. Pilarczyk
    • , Yuki Sawai
    •  & Christopher H. Vane

  • News & Views |

    Turbidites record ground motion in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Recent events are now revealing how turbidites record earthquakes, but turbidites are triggered in many ways, and testing if ancient turbidites are earthquake-triggered remains challenging.

    • Peter J. Talling

  • Article |

    The presence of large rivers in North Africa critical for Quaternary human migrations were controlled by a combination of orbital forcing and Mediterranean storminess, according to terrestrial proxy records from a marine core off Libya integrated with paleoclimate modelling.

    • Cécile L. Blanchet
    • , Anne H. Osborne
    •  & Martin Frank

  • Article |

    River meanders migrate much faster in barren than in vegetated landscapes, according to global analyses of active meander migration of both unvegetated and vegetated rivers. The difference in migration rates suggests that the rise of land plants had a significant influence on landscapes.

    • Alessandro Ielpi
    •  & Mathieu G. A. Lapôtre

  • Article |

    Experiments suggest that magnetite precipitation on early Mars was accompanied by the release of H2 that may have helped to warm the planet and stabilize liquid water at the Martian surface.

    • Nicholas J. Tosca
    • , Imad A. M. Ahmed
    •  & Joel A. Hurowitz

  • Article |

    Microbial life colonized the land surface by 3.2 billion years ago, forming complex communities distinct from those in nearby marine environments, according to analyses of fossilized microbial mats in the Moodies Group, South Africa.

    • Martin Homann
    • , Pierre Sansjofre
    •  & Stefan V. Lalonde

  • News & Views |

    Plants influence geomorphology. Research on salt marshes suggests that feedbacks between geomorphic processes and life-history traits of plants produce species-specific signatures in the organization of biogeomorphic landscapes.

    • Dov Corenblit

  • News & Views |

    Tectonic controls on atmospheric oxygenation are frequently invoked — but whether geochemical records support these ties is an unsettled question.

    • Noah Planavsky

  • Perspective |

    Ancient hydrothermal deposits formed in the Martian subsurface may be the best targets for finding evidence for ancient life on Mars, and clues about the origin of life on Earth.

    • Joseph R. Michalski
    • , Tullis C. Onstott
    •  & Sarah Stewart Johnson

  • News & Views |

    Partial desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea may have boosted magmatism during the Messinian epoch.

    • Jean-Arthur Olive

  • News & Views |

    Serpentine minerals in Earth's early upper continental crust suppressed atmospheric oxygen levels until the upper crust became granitic.

    • J. Elis Hoffmann

  • Article |

    A decrease in mafic continental crust coincides with the rise of O2 in the Earth’s surface environments about 3 billion years ago, according to an analysis of sediment chemistry. Reduced rates of serpentinization of mafic material, which produces chemicals that react with O2, could explain the link.

    • Matthijs A. Smit
    •  & Klaus Mezger

  • Letter |

    The sediment load of China’s Yellow River has been declining. Analysis of 60 years of runoff and sediment load data attributes this decline to river engineering, with an increasing role of post-1990s land use changes on the Loess Plateau.

    • Shuai Wang
    • , Bojie Fu
    •  & Yafeng Wang

  • News & Views |

    The Cambrian evolution of burrowing species is thought to have facilitated sediment mixing. However, sediment fabrics suggest that bioturbation remained insignificant until the appearance of more efficient sediment mixers in the Silurian.

    • Murray Gingras
    •  & Kurt Konhauser

  • Letter |

    Mobile organisms first appeared in the fossil record prior to the Precambrian–Cambrian transition. Sediment textures indicate that the degree of sediment mixing by animal activity remained low for 120 million years following the transition.

    • Lidya G. Tarhan
    • , Mary L. Droser
    •  & David T. Johnston

  • Letter |

    Braided channels are rare in submarine environments, yet common in fluvial systems. Laboratory experiments suggest that the formation mechanisms are the same, but submarine channels are typically not wide enough to promote braiding.

    • Brady Z. Foreman
    • , Steven Y. J. Lai
    •  & Chris Paola

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