Life before the rise of oxygen

The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis and the ensuing rise of environmental oxygen constitute one of the most striking transitions in Earth's environmental history. A major question lingers, however, with regard to the relative timing between the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis and the appearance of significant atmospheric oxygen. Multiple lines of geological evidence suggests that the rise of oxygen occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, while lipid biomarker data appear to indicate that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved some 300 million years earlier. In these pages I present a number of data sets that provide insight into this discordance. The first two chapters are focused on sharpening current understanding of both the extant distribution and evolution of lipid biomarker biosynthesis (particularly hopanoids). I provide new constraints with implications for the interpretation of lipid biomarkers in deep time and today. The remaining two chapters assay the Late Archean rock record through the lens of a well-preserved carbonate platform preserved across the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. Isotopic data from carbonates and organic matter preserved across a paleoenvironmental depth gradient indicate that the carbon cycle operated in a similar fashion to today with organic carbon burial as a significant sink, requiring a similar export flux of oxidants to the oceans and atmosphere during Late Archean time. In addition, carbon isotope ratios from basinal iron-bearing carbonates imply that microbial dissimilatory iron reduction was a conspicuous metabolism in Late Archean sedimentary environments. I also provide new observations and a conceptual model of iron formation deposition, demonstrating that by explaining the origin and nature of silica within Late Archean deep-water iron formation, a complimentary understanding emerges of the processes involved during deposition of the iron. Because the Archean fossil record is notably poor, the observations and hypotheses posed here reveal additional insight into the geobiology of the Archean Eon, and life on Earth before the rise of oxygen.