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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Laboratory Simulation of an Iron(II)-rich Precambrian Marine Upwelling System to Explore the Growth of Photosynthetic Bacteria
Published on: July 24, 2016
From manganese mineral evolution history to atmospheric oxygen reconstruction
Yan Li1,2, Ziyi Zhuang2, Xinran Xu3
1SKLab-DeepMinE, MOEKLab-OBCE, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Abstract:
The evolutionary record of redox-sensitive manganese (Mn) minerals encodes critical information about Earth's oxygenation history. By building a global Mn mineral dataset (144 200 entries across 25 feature dimensions), we developed a URD (Unequal-size feature matrix, Recoupling relationship, and Disaccord labels) deep-learning model to reconstruct continuous atmospheric oxygen level (pO2) changes over 4.0 billion years. Our results provide robust mineralogical evidence linking the timing and tempo of oxygenation to planetary-scale tectonics and biosphere evolution. Specially, the reconstruction reveals two distinct oxygenation modes: a protracted and gradual increase during the Paleoproterozoic-Mesoproterozoic, reflected in the moderately progressive evolution of Mn mineral assemblages; and a more rapid rise preceding and following the Neoproterozoic, coincided with supercontinent breakup and convergence, respectively-a pattern potentially driven by tectonic modulation of Mn supply and demand. This study introduces a mineral-informatic framework for decoding complex, high-dimensional mineral records, offering a transformative approach for systematically interrogating Earth's long-term evolution.
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