Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Ocean chemistry

Neoproterozoic glass-bleeding

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 192–193 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Volcanic eruptions at ocean ridges produce large volumes of glass that is rapidly leached by seawater. Geochemical calculations suggest that this process helps to explain the deposition of carbonates at the end of extreme ice ages.

Continental drift over geological time led to the repeated formation and fragmentation of supercontinents. These supercontinents broke up by progressively 'unzipping' along rifts, creating individual continents separated by oceanic crust and a central ridge. These central ridges are shallow, less than two kilometres below the ocean surface, which results in explosive fragmentation of the molten rock as it makes contact with seawater. Chilling leads to glass fragments forming porous bodies of rock called hyaloclastites. The glass is rapidly leached to form a poorly crystalline substance termed palagonite, releasing dissolved calcium, magnesium, silica and phosphorus. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Gernon et al.1 show that the operation of this process during the disintegration of Rodinia between 750 and 650 million years ago could explain the unusual seawater chemistry that occurred during a concurrent and subsequent panglaciation.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Shallow ridge effects.

References

  1. Gernon, T. M., Hincks, T. K., Tyrrell, T., Rohling, E. J. & Palmer, M. R. Nature Geosci. 9, 242–248 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hoffman, P. F., Kaufman, A. J., Halverson, G. P. & Schrag, D. P. Science 281, 1342–1346 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Fairchild, I. J. & Kennedy, M. J. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 164, 895–921 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Donnadieu, Y. et al. Nature 428, 303–306 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Lenton, T. M., Boyle, R. A., Poulton, S. W., Shields-Zhou, G. A. & Butterfield, N. J. Nature Geosci. 7, 257–265 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Benn, D. et al. Nature Geosci. 8, 704–707 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Le Hir, G. et al. Geology 36, 47–50 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hoffman, P. F. Sedimentology 58, 57–119 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Ye, Q. et al. Geology 43, 507–510 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ian J. Fairchild is in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK,

    Ian J. Fairchild

Authors
  1. Ian J. Fairchild
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ian J. Fairchild.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fairchild, I. Neoproterozoic glass-bleeding. Nature Geosci 9, 192–193 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2643

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2643

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing