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A 300-million-year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil plant cuticles

Nature volume 411, pages 287–290 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

To understand better the link between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and climate over geological time, records of past CO2 are reconstructed from geochemical proxies1,2,3,4. Although these records have provided us with a broad picture of CO2 variation throughout the Phanerozoic eon (the past 544 Myr), inconsistencies and gaps remain that still need to be resolved. Here I present a continuous 300-Myr record of stomatal abundance from fossil leaves of four genera of plants that are closely related to the present-day Ginkgo tree. Using the known relationship between leaf stomatal abundance and growing season CO2 concentrations5,6, I reconstruct past atmospheric CO2 concentrations. For the past 300 Myr, only two intervals of low CO2 (<1,000 p.p.m.v.) are inferred, both of which coincide with known ice ages in Neogene (1–8 Myr) and early Permian (275–290 Myr) times. But for most of the Mesozoic era (65–250 Myr), CO2 levels were high (1,000–2,000 p.p.m.v.), with transient excursions to even higher CO2 (>2,000 p.p.m.v.) concentrations. These results are consistent with some reconstructions of past CO2 (refs 1, 2) and palaeotemperature records7, but suggest that CO2 reconstructions based on carbon isotope proxies3,4 may be compromised by episodic outbursts of isotopically light methane8,9. These results support the role of water vapour, methane and CO2 in greenhouse climate warming over the past 300 Myr.

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Figure 1: Rarefaction analysis indicates how many cells need to be counted for reliable determination of stomatal index (SI).
Figure 2: Stomatal index has varied considerably over the past 300 million years, but was as high during the early Permian ice age as it has been during the Neogene.
Figure 3
Figure 4: Cuticular estimates (a, b) of atmospheric CO2 (p.p.m.v.) can be compared with other proxies (c) over the past 300 million years.

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Acknowledgements

A. Liston provided herbarium specimens of Ginkgo, M. Shaffer helped with SEM imaging, and S. Tanaka supplied Japanese literature. W. Kürschner, D. Dilcher, S. Scheckler and V. Wilde offered useful botanical discussion. M. Manga and J. Wynn helped with curve fitting and diffusion equations.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403-1272, Oregon, USA

    Gregory J. Retallack

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Correspondence to Gregory J. Retallack.

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Retallack, G. A 300-million-year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil plant cuticles. Nature 411, 287–290 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35077041

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