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Early Earth

Oxygen for heavy-metal fans

Nature volume 461, pages 179–180 (2009)Cite this article

Chromium isotopes provide an eyebrow-raising history of oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere. Not least, it seems that oxygen might have all but disappeared half a billion years after its initial rise.

That the Earth's early atmosphere had vanishingly low levels of oxygen is widely, if not universally1, acknowledged. The first appreciable rise occurred about 2.4 billion years ago, during what is known as the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE. Evidence for a second major increase about 750 million years ago — this one large enough to favour the rise of animals — has received an equally enthusiastic reception. The details of these increases, however, and the nature of the ocean and atmosphere during the time between them, are matters of debate. Frei et al.2 (page 250 of this issue) have used a new geochemical tracer, chromium (Cr) isotopes, to reveal that oxygenation was probably more nuanced and less unidirectional than we might have imagined.

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Figure 1: Tracking oxygen above and below.

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  1. Timothy W. Lyons and Christopher T. Reinhard are in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA. timothy.lyons@ucr.edu,

    Timothy W. Lyons & Christopher T. Reinhard

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Lyons, T., Reinhard, C. Oxygen for heavy-metal fans. Nature 461, 179–180 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461179a

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