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Delayed and variable late Archaean atmospheric oxidation due to high collision rates on Earth

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 827–831 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Frequent violent collisions of impactors from space punctuated the geological and atmospheric evolution of early Earth. It is generally accepted that the most massive collisions altered the chemistry of Earth’s earliest atmosphere, but the consequences of Archaean collisions for atmospheric oxidation are little understood. Early Archaean (4.0–3.5 billion years ago (Ga)) impact flux models are tightly constrained by lunar cratering and radiometric data. Further, a record of the late Archaean (3.5–2.5 Ga) impact flux is provided by terrestrial impact spherule layers—formed by collisions with bodies ≥10–20 km in diameter—although this record is probably incomplete and significant uncertainties remain. Here we show, on the basis of an assessment of impactor-related spherule records and modelling of the atmospheric effects of these impacts, that current bombardment models underestimate the number of late Archaean spherule layers. These findings suggest that the late Archaean impactor flux was up to a factor of ten higher than previously thought. We find that the delivered impactor mass was an important sink of oxygen, suggesting that early bombardment could have delayed Earth’s atmosphere oxidation. In addition, late Archaean large impacts (≥10 km) probably caused drastic oscillations of atmospheric oxygen, with an average time between consecutive collisions of about 15 Myr. This pattern is consistent with a known episode of atmospheric oxygen oscillation at ~2.5 Ga that is bracketed by large impacts recorded by Bee Gorge (~2.54 Ga) and Dales Gorge (~2.49 Ga) spherule layers.

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Fig. 1: Lunar impact fluxes.
Fig. 2: Earth’s collisional history and Archaean spherule layers.
Fig. 3: Impact-related oxygen sinks.

Data availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available within the main articles, Methods and Extended Data. Input data used for the figures are available upon request. All new data associated with this paper will be made publicly available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5543898.v1

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge insightful discussions with D. Lowe, B. Black, B. Johnson and R. Fu. T.S. was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, SCHU 3061/1-1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA

    S. Marchi, D. Nesvorny & W. F. Bottke

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    N. Drabon & L. Schaefer

  3. Harvard University, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Cambridge, MA, USA

    N. Drabon

  4. Department of Lithospheric Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    T. Schulz & C. Koeberl

  5. Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany

    T. Schulz

  6. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    T. Lyons

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Contributions

S.M. conceived the work and performed Monte Carlo impact flux calculations and derived impactor sizes from spherule-layer data. N.D., T.S. and C.K. provided spherule-layers data and helped with their interpretation. L.S. performed oxygen calculations. D.N. and W.F.B. helped with the terrestrial impact flux. T.L. helped with the geochemical record of atmospheric oxygenation. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to S. Marchi.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Impactor size-frequency distributions.

Gray curve is the MBA SFD from ref. 40. This SFD was able to generate a NEO SFD in agreement with observations at that time. The orange curve is an update of the MBA SFD—our nominal MBA SFD—that better fit the current NEO SFD (green). The vertical dashed lines indicate reference sizes of 33 m and 5 km (see text for details). For completeness, 1.1 km is also indicated, corresponding to an impactor size that would make a 20 km lunar crater (often used for calibrating bombardment models), for an impactor density of 2.5 g/cm3, 18 km/s impact velocity, 45 deg impact angle (see Methods).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Testing collisional models.

a) Model impactor SFDs (red curves as in Fig. 2b) compared with Monte Carlo retrieval of impactor SFDs from spherule layers for the minimum number of independent layers (Extended Data Table 1). Meaning of symbols and colors as in Fig. 2b. b) Best-fit collisional model. The figure shows the model impactor SFDs (blue curves) for γbest = 10γmax. The green and yellow lines are the impactor SFDs reconstructed from spherule layers (see Fig. 2b), but now impactors sizes are reduced by a factor fbest = 1.5 (see text). The red shaded area indicates the range of impactor SFDs for γmax, as in Fig. 2b.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Atmospheric O2 abundance after impact.

The calculations assume chemical equilibrium between the total impactor vapor mass and background atmosphere. Here we take a background atmosphere of 0.7 bars N2, 0.3 bars CO2, and 1 ppm O2. The initial impact conditions are taken as 100 bars and 2000 K and used to derive the composition of the impactor vapor in equilibrium with the impacting meteoritic material. We then vary the mass of impactor vapor to atmospheric mass for different impactor diameters. Atmospheric O2 abundances are strongly depleted by 1000 K, indicating that quenching of chemical reactions within the vapor plume should not strongly affect the amount of O2 consumed by the impact.

Extended Data Table 1 Archean impact spherule layers
Full size table

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Marchi, S., Drabon, N., Schulz, T. et al. Delayed and variable late Archaean atmospheric oxidation due to high collision rates on Earth. Nat. Geosci. 14, 827–831 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00835-9

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