New Constraints on Global Geochemical Cycling During Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (Late Cretaceous) From a 6-Million-year Long Molybdenum-Isotope Record

Intervals of extreme warmth are predicted to drive a decrease in the oxygen content of the oceans. This prediction has been tested for the acme of short (<1 million years) episodes of significant marine anoxia in the Phanerozoic geological record known as Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs). However, there is a paucity of data spanning prolonged multimillion-year intervals of geological time before and after OAEs. We present a Mo-isotope record from limestones and marlstones of the Eagle Ford Group, South Texas, which was deposited in the southern Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway of North America during a 6-million-year period encompassing OAE 2 (Late Cenomanian-early Turonian: similar to 94 Ma). Mo-isotope compositions from deposits that formed in euxinic (sulfidic) conditions before OAE 2 allow the paleo-seawater composition to be constrained to 1.1%-1.9%. This range of values overlaps previous estimates of up to similar to 1.5% for the peak of OAE 2 determined from similarly sulfidic sediments deposited in the restricted proto-North Atlantic Ocean. Mo-isotopes thus varied by less than a few tenths of per mil across one of the most extreme intervals of global deoxygenation in the Late Phanerozoic. Rather than a limited change in oceanic deoxygenation, we suggest that the new data reflect changes to global iron cycling linked to basalt-seawater interaction, terrestrial weathering and expanded partially oxygenated shallow shelf-seas that played a key role in the burial of isotopically light molybdenum, thus acting as a counterbalance to its removal into sulfidic sediments.

Automated summary

The study analyzed the molybdenum isotope record in sediments deposited in the southern Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway during OAE 2, finding that there were only minor changes in oceanic deoxygenation during one of the most extreme intervals of global deoxygenation in the Late Phanerozoic.