Pondering the Precambrian #25

Proterozoic:

NeoProterozoic:

Cobalt deposits may be 150 million years younger than previously thought and due to an orogenic event.

There's evidence suggesting scavenging was the origin of predation during the Ediacaran.

There's evidence of shifting from continental collision to a subduction in Africa during the Ediacaran.

There were very diverse microfossils from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation.

The fossilization method of the Ediacaran gets examined for the earliest metazoans.

Fossils from the Ediacaran site at Nilpena, Australia are biological snapshots of benthic communities.

Ediacaran discoid fossils from the Anti-Atlas Mountains in Africa have been found.

In the early Ediacaran ocean, there seems to have been a global zinc signature.

Did the complex forms of the Ediacaran arise in the benthic depths of the ocean because there were stable temperatures?

In China, the carbonate caps suggest a oxygen recovery after the Marinoan Glaciation ended.

The oxygen isotopes from the Cryogenian meteoric water are similar to today's.

A group attempts to model the global temperatures from the Tonian to the present.

MesoProterozoic:

Fossils from Brazil suggest two different microbial habitats from the Stenian at the site.

There is evidence of oxygenated lakes 1.1 billion years ago during the Stenian.

There is evidence of oxygenation in the form of red beds that were created during an orogeny around the Stenian/Ectasian boundary.

PaleoProterozoic:

Statherian microfossils from China suggest eukaryotes were moderately diverse by that point in time.

Evidence of the Huronian Glaciation has been discovered in China.  This may have been the first time a Snowball Earth scenario took place.

Phosphorite deposits appear to have come from a microbial reef in the Siderian of Australia.

Archean:

Features from 2.7 billion year old stromatolite formations hint at the presence of oxygen.

The is evidence of a shift from vertical to horizontal plate tectonics in the Archean.

During the Mesoarchean the bottom waters of the ocean appear to have been anoxic.

There appears to have been a cryptic craton core that emerged in the Paleoarchean.

Aerobic photosynthesis might have arisen 3.5 billion years ago during the Paleoarchean.

Origin of Life:

Abiotic amino acids from the Earth's mantle have been observed for the first time.

Are liquid crystal matrices an analog to the early protocells?