Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 342, Issue 6154, Pages 101-104Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1240971
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Funding
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche [eLife-2]
- European Research Council under the European Community [267255]
- Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
- Institut des Sciences de l'Univers
- Geological Survey of Western Australia
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Understanding the atmosphere's composition during the Archean eon is fundamental to unraveling ancient environmental conditions. We show from the analysis of nitrogen and argon isotopes in fluid inclusions trapped in 3.0- to 3.5-billion-year-old hydrothermal quartz that the partial pressure of N-2 of the Archean atmosphere was lower than 1.1 bar, possibly as low as 0.5 bar, and had a nitrogen isotopic composition comparable to the present-day one. These results imply that dinitrogen did not play a significant role in the thermal budget of the ancient Earth and that the Archean partial pressure of CO2 was probably lower than 0.7 bar.
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