Mudrocks get a vegetative assist Mudrocks such as slate and shale are rarely found in stratigraphy older than about 500 million years. McMahon and Davies compiled a large database of mudrock occurrence over the past 3.5 billion years to help assess the origin of this ubiquitous rock type (see the Perspective by Fischer). Mudrocks appeared at the same time as did deep-rooted land plants. The interplay between plants and sedimentary rocks suggests that a change in erosion rate and the chemistry of sediments delivered to the oceans occurred around 500 million years ago. Science, this issue p. 1022; see also p. 994 Rooted land plants appear to help reduce erosion rate and promote mudrock lithification. Mudrocks are a primary archive of Earth’s history from the Archean eon to recent times, and their source-to-sink production and deposition play a central role in long-term ocean chemistry and climate regulation. Using original and published stratigraphic data from all 704 of Earth’s known alluvial formations from the Archean eon (3.5 billion years ago) to the Carboniferous period (0.3 billion years ago), we prove contentions of an upsurge in the proportion of mud retained on land coeval with vegetation evolution. We constrain the onset of the upsurge to the Ordovician-Silurian and show that alluvium deposited after land plant evolution contains a proportion of mudrock that is, on average, 1.4 orders of magnitude greater than the proportion contained in alluvium from the preceding 90% of Earth’s history. We attribute this shift to the ways in which vegetation revolutionized mud production and sediment flux from continental interiors.

中文翻译：

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早期陆生植物强迫冲积泥岩的演化

泥岩得到植物生长的帮助 在超过约 5 亿年的地层中很少发现诸如板岩和页岩之类的泥岩。McMahon 和 Davies 编译了过去 35 亿年泥岩发生的大型数据库，以帮助评估这种无处不在的岩石类型的起源（参见 Fischer 的观点）。泥岩与根深蒂固的陆生植物同时出现。植物和沉积岩之间的相互作用表明，侵蚀率和输送到海洋的沉积物化学性质的变化发生在大约 5 亿年前。科学，这个问题 p。1022; 另见第。994 有根陆生植物似乎有助于降低侵蚀率并促进泥岩石化。泥岩是地球历史的主要档案，从太古宙到近代，它们的源到汇的生产和沉积在长期的海洋化学和气候调节中发挥着核心作用。使用来自太古代（35 亿年前）到石炭纪（3 亿年前）的所有 704 个地球已知冲积层的原始和已发表的地层数据，我们证明了关于同时期陆地上保留的泥浆比例激增的论点随着植被的演化。我们将热潮的开始限制在奥陶纪-志留纪，并表明陆地植物进化后沉积的冲积层包含的泥岩比例平均比地球前 90% 的冲积层中包含的比例高 1.4 个数量级历史。我们将这种转变归因于植被彻底改变了大陆内部泥浆生产和沉积物通量的方式。