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Microbial life and biogeochemical cycling on land 3,220 million years ago

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 665–671 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The colonization of emergent continental landmass by microbial life was an evolutionary step of paramount importance in Earth history. Here we report direct fossil evidence for life on land 3,220 million years ago (Ma) in the form of terrestrial microbial mats draping fluvial conglomerates and gravelly sandstones of the Moodies Group, South Africa. Combined field, petrographic, carbon isotope and Raman spectroscopic analyses confirm the synsedimentary origin and biogenicity of these unique fossil mats as well as their fluvial habitat. The carbon isotope compositions of organic matter (δ13Corg) from these mats define a narrow range centred on −21‰, in contrast to fossil mats of marine origin from nearby tidal deposits that show δ13Corg values as low as −34‰. Bulk nitrogen isotope compositions (2 < δ15N < 5‰) are also significantly different from their marine counterparts (0 < δ15N < 3‰), which we interpret as reflecting denitrification in the terrestrial habitat, possibly of an atmospheric source of nitrate. Our results support the antiquity of a thriving terrestrial biosphere during the Palaeoarchaean and suggest that a complex and microbially driven redox landscape existed during the deposition of the Moodies Group, with distinct biogeochemical cycling occurring on land by 3,220 Ma.

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Fig. 1: Field photographs of fluvial sandstones and conglomerates hosting fossil terrestrial mats from the 3,220-Myr-old Moodies Group.
Fig. 2: Reflected and transmitted light photomicrographs of the terrestrial microbial mats of the Moodies Group.
Fig. 3: Images of the kerogenous laminae and filamentous microstructures.
Fig. 4: Carbon isotope composition of organic matter and bulk nitrogen isotope composition from terrestrial and marine microbial mats of the Palaeoarchaean Moodies Group.

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  • 08 October 2018

    In the version of this Article originally published, author Magali Ader was wrongly linked to affiliation 3; it should have been affiliation 2. This error has now been corrected in the online versions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was greatly supported by LabexMER ANR-10-LABX-19 and Prestige COFUND-GA-2013-609102 to M.H., and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant He2418/13–1 to C.H. S.V.L. and M.V.Z. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 716515 for S.V.L. and grant agreement n° 646894 for M.V.Z.). We thank N. and D. Oosthuizen for access to the private Mountainlands nature reserve, S. Bläsing and M. Grund for assistance with sample collection, J.-P. Oldra for thin section preparation, and O. Lebeau, C. Tanvet, C. Liorzou, M.-L. Rouget and B. Gueguen for assistance with isotopic and elemental analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Institute for Marine Studies, CNRS-UMR6538 Laboratoire Géosciences Océan, Technopôle Brest-Iroise, Plouzané, France

    Martin Homann, Pierre Sansjofre, Bryan Killingsworth, Ian S. Foster & Stefan V. Lalonde

  2. Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, CNRS-UMR7154, Paris, France

    Mark Van Zuilen, Jian Gong & Magali Ader

  3. Department of Geosciences, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany

    Christoph Heubeck

  4. Center of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Alessandro Airo

  5. Australian Centre for Astrobiology, and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Martin J. Van Kranendonk

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Contributions

M.H. and C.H. carried out fieldwork and collected samples in South Africa. P.S., M.A. and S.V.L. helped with the acquisition and interpretation of elemental and isotopic data. M.V.Z. and J.G. performed Raman analysis. B.K., I.S.F., A.A. and M.J.V.K. contributed to the discussion of the data. M.H. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Martin Homann.

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Homann, M., Sansjofre, P., Van Zuilen, M. et al. Microbial life and biogeochemical cycling on land 3,220 million years ago. Nature Geosci 11, 665–671 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0190-9

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