Dust, iron, life

(Geological Society of America) Dust begets life, and Earth's atmosphere 300 million years ago was perhaps the dustiest of all time, with large consequences for carbon cycling and the climate system. In a new paper for Geology, Sohini Sur and colleagues examine the bioavailability of iron in dust from Earth's penultimate icehouse of the late Paleozoic. Dust links to carbon because of the iron -- a key nutrient for nearly all life, so atmospheric dust acts as a fertilizer.