A recent study attempts to explain estimates of global organic carbon (OC) burial during the Cretaceous that include buried OC for unstudied portions of the global ocean. Geological evidence shows that the Earth’s ocean-atmospheric system experienced many perturbations during the Cretaceous (145.5 to 66 million years ago (Ma)). These perturbations are particularly noticeable when there was widespread OC burial, resulting in oceanic anoxic events (OAEs). The best documented of these events is known as OAE-2, and occurred roughly 93.9 Ma. Yet, even though a multitude of sediments associated with the OAE-2 have been studied, the majority of buried OC for this event is not accounted for. A recent study compares model estimates with the OC content of known OAE-2 sediments in an attempt to address this discrepancy.

The study, “Quantifying the missing sink for global organic carbon burial during a Cretaceous oceanic anoxic event,” was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The work was supported by NASA Astrobiology through the Exobiology Program.