Carbon is one of the building blocks of life. At CLEVER Planets, we are interested in learning as much as possible into carbon’s history on Earth.
A new paper released today in Nature Geosciences explores the Lomagundi event — a event occurring over 2 billion years ago and that describes a somewhat unique phase in carbon history. During this event, carbon isotope ratios were skewed.
The CLEVER Planets researchers working on the paper developed a series of events that could have explained this skew. The crux of their theory lies in increased volcanic activity and cycling of carbon deep within the Earth.
A benefit of this theory is that it seeks also to explain the dramatic rise in Earth’s oxygen levels that occurred around the same time.
Read more about the paper — written by CLEVER Planets researchers James Eguchi, Johnny Seales, and Rajdeep Dasgupta — in this official Rice University press release, or check out the full paper at this link.