Along with collaborators Tim Gallagher (former PhD student in GRiTS) and Anthony Chappaz (CMU), Katy Rico and Nathan have a new paper out in Geophysical Research Letters entitled Redox Chemistry and Molybdenum Burial in a Mesoproterozoic Lake. Other workers have suggested that Molybdenum (Mo) enrichments in Precambrian lake sediments may reflect atmospheric oxygen levels. Instead, by comparing modern anoxic lake sediments with the 1.1 Ga Nonesuch Formation from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we find that Mo is being buried as a part of a particulate shuttle and reflects only the lake redoxcline, and is not related to atmospheric oxygen levels. Full details can be found in our paper at GRL.
