Место издания: Florence , Год издания: 2004

Biota evolution in the Earth history depended on many factors of general character. It is possible to suppose that the content of phosphorus in the environment is one of them, as it is the component of each living cell. This idea has been expressed by several authors (Krasilnikova, 1967, Cook and Shergold, 1984, Cook and Cook, 1985, Zanin, 2001, Donnelly et al., 1990, Brasier, 1990, Kholodov, 1997). Follow this conception we wrote (Zanin, 1992): " … the coincidence of two epochs of the most intense phosphorite formation in the Earth's history (the first began in the Vendian, and the second in the Late Cretaceous) with the epochs of intense biota evolution is possible not occasional. The arrival of increased amounts of feeding materials, first of all phosphorus, at basins in these periods might have affected not only the quantitative development of fauna but, may be, its evolution as well". This conclusion may be also applied to Ordovician, Late Devonian, Late Permian periods. At the same time many geologists correlate the enrichment of marine water by phosphorus with its supply from weathering crust. N.S. Shatsky (1955) was the first who proposed this idea. Later V.P. Kazarinov (1966), who developed the preposition on the existence of the global epochs of weathering, suggested the coincidence of the epochs of weathering and phosphorite genesis. Now this opinion is maintained by the wide range of the investigators (Zanin, 1981, Arthur, Jenkins, 1981, Germann et al., 1987, Glenn, Arthur, 1990, Follmi, 1995). We gave the review of views on this conception in our recent (2001) publication. Thus, it is possible to declare with the high degree of the reliability that just weathering in the periods of its intensification enriching the marine basins by phosphorus and other nutrients is one of the leading, if not the major, factor of the biota evolution