Model results from a UC Riverside research team open the
possibility of a more dynamic biological oxygen cycle on the early Earth than
previously suppose
A research team of biogeochemists at the University of
California, Riverside has provided a new view on the relationship between the
earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important
biological event in Earth history, and its relationship to the sulfur cycle.
A general consensus exists that appreciable oxygen first
accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. Though
this paradigm is built upon a wide range of geological and geochemical
observations, the famous “smoking gun” for what has come to be known as the
“Great Oxidation Event” (GOE) comes from the disappearance of anomalous
fractionations in rare sulfur isotopes.