GSA Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA - 2017

Paper No. 324-7
Presentation Time: 9:50 AM

MICROEUKARYOTES IN FERRUGINOUS (FE-RICH) MID-PROTEROZOIC OCEAN ANALOGUES (Invited Presentation)


CROWE, Sean A.1, SIMISTER, Rachel L.1, MARESCA, Julia2 and HALLAM, Steven3, (1)Microbiology & Immunology, and Earth Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2457-2350 Health Sciences Mall, Life Sciences Center, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3, Canada, (2)Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Delaware, 301 DuPont Hall, 127 The Green, Newark, DE 19716, (3)Microbiology & Immunology, University of British Columbia, 2350 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3, Canada, sean.crowe@ubc.ca

The Proterozoic Eon has been epithetically referred to as the boring billion due to a perceived relative stasis in the evolution of Earth’s surface chemistry. At the same time, this boring interval in Earth’s geochemical history likely heralded the emergence and early diversification of Eukaryotic life. While highly controversial, new geochemical data is revealing previously undetected dynamics in atmospheric oxygen across the Proterozoic Eon. At the same time, emerging insight implies redox stratified oceans with a variably oxygenated surface waters overlying ferruginous deep waters. These stratified, ferruginous oceans set the ecological and biogeochemical landscape that shaped the evolution of early Eukaryotes and the nature of the Earth system that supported the rise of multi-cellular life. In this talk, we report on the ecology of microeukaryotes from modern ferruginous analogues to the Proterozoic oceans and we discuss implications for the ecology of microeukaryotic communities that likely populated the Mid-proterozoic oceans.