Photoferrotrophic Bacteria Initiated Plate Tectonics in the Neoarchean
Abstract
Plate tectonics distinguishes Earth from the other terrestrial planets but its initiation mechanism and onset time are debated. We propose plate tectonics was initiated by the deposition of magnetite-rich banded iron formations (BIFs) through biogeochemical iron cycling in Neoarchean oceans. In the photic zone of proto-continental margins, photoferrotrophic bacteria efficiently oxidized the dissolved Fe(II) and induced massive precipitation of ferric oxyhydroxide, which would rapidly react with Fe(II)-rich hydrothermal fluids from coeval vigorous volcanism in Neoarchean oceans to produce magnetite-rich BIFs. Mechanical models demonstrate that the localization of high-density BIF deposition near proto-continents induces collapse of the lithosphere and can initiate the earliest subduction. The peak deposition of BIFs in 2.75–2.40 Ga provides a time constraint on the inception of plate tectonics.
Additional Information
© 2023. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. S.Z., Y.L., and W.L. acknowledge financial support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB41000000). S.Z. and W.L. are also partially supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (42241117 and 41820104004). M.G. was supported by NSF OCE–2049086. Data Availability Statement: The code Ellipsis is available at CIG (https://geodynamics.org/resources/ellipsis3d) or can be downloaded from Github (https://github.com/geodynamics/ellipsis3d/archive/refs/tags/v1.0.2.zip). The sedimentary thickness data is from NOAA (https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/sedthick/data/version3/GlobSed.zip). The chlorophyll-a data is from NASA OceanColor (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/l3/) by clicking the button called "Extract or Download L3 Data." The data of subduction boundaries is from EarthByte (https://www.earthbyte.org/webdav/ftp/Data_Collections/Merdith_etal_2021_ESR/SM2-Merdith_et_al_1_Ga_reconstruction_v1.1.zip).Attached Files
Supplemental Material - 2023gl103553-sup-0001-supporting_information_si-s01.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 122321
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230717-55915200.20
- XDB41000000
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 42241117
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 41820104004
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- OCE-2049086
- NSF
- Created
-
2023-07-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-07-25Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Seismological Laboratory