Eric Boyd
Montana State University, MT·Earth & Environmental Science
How much oxygen was in Earth's air hundreds of millions or billions of years ago? Rocks and ocean sediments hold clues.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Microbiology & Immunology
Chemistry
- Topics
pyrite oxidation
sulfate
triple oxygen isotopes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Conduct targeted experiments with microorganisms that oxidize pyrite at near-neutral pH to separate the individual steps of microbial pyrite oxidation.
- Measure the triple oxygen isotope composition of sulfate produced in microbial pyrite oxidation experiments to determine how each step transfers oxygen from air or water into sulfate.
- Test whether microbial pyrite oxidation explains why sulfate stopped recording atmospheric oxygen after land plants appeared.
More about the research
Sulfate minerals that formed from evaporating seawater, called sulfate evaporites, have been proposed to record the makeup of the atmosphere's oxygen at the time they formed. That record depends on oxygen atoms from air passing into sulfate when pyrite (iron sulfide, or 'fool's gold') breaks down on land. New data suggest this link broke when land plants appeared. This collaborative project tests whether the reason lies in how microbes oxidize pyrite.
Why it matters
Sulfate minerals are used to reconstruct the history of Earth's atmosphere, including oxygen levels and global productivity. Clarifying how microbes shape the oxygen isotopes in sulfate could make these records more reliable, improving our picture of how Earth's air and sulfur cycle changed over time and how conditions suitable for life developed.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Clara Blattler
University of Chicago, IL·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test hypotheses about the size and meaning of the Great Oxidation Event and the Lomagundi-Jatuli Event, using Paleoproterozoic carbonate rocks drilled in Fennoscandia in 2007.
Jena Johnson
University of Michigan, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
Precipitate the iron(II) silicate mineral greenalite at high pH in simulated ancient seawater and measure the resulting iron isotope fractionation and iron-to-manganese ratios.
David Dettman
University of Arizona, AZ·Earth & Environmental Science
Expand a prototype TILDAS system, an infrared laser instrument that identifies molecules by the light they absorb, by adding a new laser unit to measure oxygen-17 in CO2.
The school
Montana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $258M a year on research, 85 research doctorates a year.
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