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Ocean anoxic events were periods of high carbon burial that led to drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide, lowering of bottom-water oxygen concentrations and, in many cases, significant biological extinction. Most ocean anoxic events are thought to be caused by high productivity and export of carbon from surface waters which is then preserved in organic-rich sediments, known as black shales. But the factors that triggered some of these events remain uncertain. Here we present stable isotope data from a mid-Cretaceous ocean anoxic event that occurred 112 Myr ago, and that point to increased thermohaline stratification as the probable cause. Ocean anoxic event 1b is associated with an increase in surface-water temperatures and runoff that led to decreased bottom-water formation and elevated carbon burial in the restricted basins of the western Tethys and North Atlantic. This event is in many ways similar to that which led to the more recent Plio-Pleistocene Mediterranean sapropels, but the greater geographical extent and longer duration (approximately 46 kyr) of ocean anoxic event 1b suggest that processes leading to such ocean anoxic events in the North Atlantic and western Tethys were able to act over a much larger region, and sequester far more carbon, than any of the Quaternary sapropels.

Biogeochemical and stable carbon isotopic analysis of black-shale sequences deposited during an Albian oceanic anoxic event (approximately 112 million years ago) indicate that up to 80 weight percent of sedimentary organic carbon is derived from marine, nonthermophilic archaea. The carbon-13 content of archaeal molecular fossils indicates that these archaea were living chemoautotrophically. Their massive expansion may have been a response to the strong stratification of the ocean during this anoxic event. Indeed, the sedimentary record of archaeal membrane lipids suggests that this anoxic event marks a time in Earth history at which certain hyperthermophilic archaea adapted to low-temperature environments.

[1] Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 207 recovered expanded sections of organic-carbon-rich laminated shales on Demerara Rise (western tropical Atlantic). High-resolution organic carbon isotope and total organic carbon (TOC) records are presented, which span the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary interval (CTBI), including the Oceanic Anoxic Event (OAE) 2, from four sites oriented along a NW striking depth transect. These records represent the first high-resolution carbon isotope records across OAE 2 from the South American margin of the tropical Atlantic. Due to the scarcity of age significant fossils, the main purpose of this study was to develop a detailed carbon isotope stratigraphy in order to correlate the CTBI across the depth transect and to tie this to biostratigraphically well-defined sections in the Western Interior Basin (Pueblo, USA), boreal shelf seas (Eastbourne, England), and western Tethys (Oued Mellegue, Tunisia). All four sections studied document a 6% increase of d 13C org values at the base of the CTBI, which is followed by an interval of elevated d 13 C org values and a subsequent decrease. Our results supply an important stratigraphic base for subsequent paleoceanographic studies on Late Cenomanian to Early Turonian sediments from Demerara Rise and elsewhere.

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