Access

News and Views

Nature 448, 1005-1006 (30 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/4481005a; Published online 29 August 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Palaeoclimate: Oxygen's rise reduced

Timothy W. Lyons1

Top

Why did oxygen not appear in Earth's atmosphere until hundreds of millions of years after photosynthesizing organisms first produced it? Perhaps because reducing gases from undersea volcanoes claimed it first.

The oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is almost exclusively a product of photosynthesis. The transition from an early, virtually oxygen-free world to an irreversibly oxygenated one is linked to the first appearance and proliferation of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria.

  1. Timothy W. Lyons is in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA.
    Email: timothy.lyons@ucr.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Early Earth Oxygen for heavy-metal fans

Nature News and Views (10 Sep 2009)

Biogeochemistry Oxygenating the atmosphere

Nature News and Views (15 Mar 2001)

See all 12 matches for News And Views