Ideas and perspectives: hydrothermally driven redistribution and sequestration of early Archaean biomass – the “hydrothermal pump hypothesis”

Duda, Jan-Peter; Thiel, Volker; Bauersachs, Thorsten; Mißbach, Helge; Reinhardt, Manuel; Schäfer, Nadine; Van Kranendonk, Martin J.; Reitner, Joachim

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1535-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1535-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1535-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

Ideas and perspectives

| Highlight paper

|

15 Mar 2018

Ideas and perspectives | Highlight paper |

| 15 Mar 2018

Ideas and perspectives: hydrothermally driven redistribution and sequestration of early Archaean biomass – the “hydrothermal pump hypothesis”

Jan-Peter Duda, Volker Thiel, Thorsten Bauersachs, Helge Mißbach, Manuel Reinhardt, Nadine Schäfer, Martin J. Van Kranendonk, and Joachim Reitner

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Mar 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 05 Dec 2017)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review', Malcolm Walter, 21 Dec 2017
- AC1: 'Reply to bg-2017-516-RC1 (Malcom Walter)', Jan-Peter Duda, 05 Feb 2018
RC2: 'review Duda et al.', Mark van Zuilen, 07 Jan 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to bg-2017-516-RC2 (Mark van Zuilen)', Jan-Peter Duda, 05 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (06 Feb 2018) by Jack Middelburg

AR by Jan-Peter Duda on behalf of the Authors (06 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (08 Feb 2018) by Jack Middelburg

AR by Jan-Peter Duda on behalf of the Authors (09 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

The origin of organic matter in the oldest rocks on Earth is commonly ambiguous (biotic vs. abiotic). This problem culminates in the case of hydrothermal chert veins that contain abundant organic matter. Here we demonstrate a microbial origin of kerogen embedded in a 3.5 Gyr old hydrothermal chert vein. We explain this finding with the large-scale redistribution of biomass by hydrothermal fluids, emphasizing the interplay between biological and abiological processes on the early Earth.