The Great Oxidation Event: Oxygen’s Rise Reshaped Life and Climate
TL;DR Summary
Around 2.4 billion years ago, free oxygen began accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere during the Great Oxidation Event, driven by cyanobacteria; its rise triggered a mass extinction of anaerobic life, altered climate by ending methane greenhouse warming, and enabled aerobic metabolism, paving the way for complex life and eukaryotes—though oxygenation progressed slowly due to ocean chemistry and sinks, with later oxygenation events raising levels toward modern times.
- The oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is essential to almost every animal alive today — but when it first started accumulating in the air roughly 2.4 billion years ago, it triggered the most lethal pollution event in the planet's history, wiping out the vast majority of spec Space Daily
- Asteroid crater discovery in South Korea may reveal how Earth first filled with oxygen Yahoo
- Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere may owe its existence to cold subduction Phys.org
- Want an oxygen-rich atmosphere? Stuff oxygen’s friends in the mantle. Ars Technica
- Asteroid Impact Craters May Have Helped Create Early Habitats for Oxygen-Producing Life The Debrief
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