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Palaeoclimate

Oxygen's rise reduced

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.

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Figure 1: Oxygen on the up.

CYANOBACTERIA: EYE OF SCIENCE/SPL

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Lyons, T. Oxygen's rise reduced. Nature 448, 1005–1006 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/4481005a

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