-
Subaerial Volcanoes Shift Oxygen Levels on Early Earth
August 31, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe
Biomarkers in rocks prior to the rise in Earth’s atmospheric oxygen 2.5 billion years ago show cyanobacteria released oxygen at the same levels as today. What was happening to that oxygen? A new paper in this week’s Nature from NAI’s Penn State Team proposes that the rise of atmospheric oxygen occurred because the predominant sink for oxygen—enhanced submarine volcanism—was abruptly and permanently diminished during the Archaean–Proterozoic transition by a shift from predominantly submarine volcanism to a mix of subaerial and submarine volcanism.
Source: [Link]
- A Slow Death in the P-T Extinction
- An Alternative Path for the Evolution of Nitrogen Fixation
- A New Pathway to Life's Origin
- Ground Truth
- 2012 Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference
- A New Postdoc at NAI Central
- O/OREOS Nanosatellite Success in Orbit
- Astrobiologists among the 2012 Geochemical Fellows
- A Salt-Free Primordial Soup?
- Rethinking an Alien World
