Volcanic phosphorus spikes associated with supercontinent assembly supported the evolution of land plants

The Impetus for Bloom of Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems in Northern China: Insights From Volcanic Nutrient and Harmful Element Delivery

“… Illustration of the coupling between the deep geological processes and terrestrial biotas, modified from C. Ma, Tang, and Ying (2022). The paleo‐Pacific plate subduction triggered Mesozoic tectonism and volcanism in northern China.…”

“…In addition, 82 volcanic and 29 lacustrine sedimentary rock samples (Data Set S1 in Supporting Information ) are collected from the drill cores of Jurassic Haifanggou‒Lanqi formations in Beipiao, Chaoyang (Figure 1), and the stratigraphic sections of Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation from Xinkailing (41°36′50.39″N, 120°47′15.65″E) to the fossil museum of Sihetun (41°35′26.20″N, 120°47′49.44″E) in Beipiao, Chaoyang and from Mashenmiao (41°29′21.62″N, 121°00′40.27″E) to Songbahu (41°27′49.53″N, 121°10′35.98″E) in Yixian, Jinzhou (Figure 1). A statistically‐based big data analytical method from C. Ma, Tang, and Ying (2022) is applied to calculate the volcanic nutrient/harmful element delivery (VND/VHD) and their normalized values (VND N /VHD N ), reflecting the relative changes in the input of volcanic elements to the Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems in the studied area. Detailed big data analytical methods, information on rock samples, whole‐rock elemental analyses of fresh samples (Duan et al., 2022; W.‐J.…”

“…Volcanism triggered by cratonic destruction can provide an adequate nutrient supply for surface ecosystems through the weathering of volcanic products (Longman et al., 2021). In particular, P, an essential nutrient, linked volcanism to land plant evolution in the Ordovician and Carboniferous periods (C. Ma, Tang, & Ying, 2022). Thus, through material supply, volcanism can potentially connect deep tectonic processes and terrestrial biological evolution (Spencer, 2022).…”

A Five‐stage Evolution of Earth's Phosphorus Cycle

“…At the same time, a fully oxidized ocean provided a wider living environment for complex eukaryotic life, thus extending the P cycling from the Precambrian coastal environments into deep ocean (Nelson et al, 2010;Ruttenberg, 2014). In addition, we note that considering the much shorter residence time of P in organisms, especially in ocean biota (Ruttenberg, 2014;Karl, 2014), long-term geological activities are difficult to directly affect the fast biotic P cycling in ecosystems although during the mass extinctions when previous ecosystems broke, the long-term regulation of tectonic and marine redox on Earth's P cycle could be re-highlighted (Schobben et al, 2020;Reershemius and Planavsky, 2021;Ma et al, 2022b).…”

Phosphorus Variations in Volcanic Sequences Reveal the Linkage Between Regional Tectonics and Terrestrial Biota Evolution

“…The exposure of the bedrock to subaerial weathering resulted in the gray and brown volcanic rocks and paleosol development in the Sichakou Basin, northern Hebei (Yang et al., 2020). Due to the different volumes between the volcanic deposits and the contemporaneous non‐volcanic sediments (Huang, 2019), volcanic P controlled the variation of available P in the terrestrial environment affected by volcanism (Longman et al., 2021; Ma, Tang, & Ying, 2022).…”