the age Determination of the South African igneous rocks and the study of samples with uranium-lead method allowed the authors of the new work to obtain chemical evidence of global changes in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, which, according to them, occurred about 2.5 billion years ago.
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Previously, scientists have dated this event one hundred million years later.
According to geologists, traces of a sharp increase in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere correspond in timing to the period of occurrence of ancient oxygen catastrophe or oxygen revolution.
while our planet is distinguished by the almost complete isolation of the hydrosphere from the atmosphere, and its snow-ice polar cap stretched, almost to the equator. As is known, the species was then represented mostly by anaerobic organisms, unable to exist in conditions of high oxygen concentration. “Atmospheric revolution” led to the fact that they gave way to aerobic.
In a study published last spring in the edition of Nature Geoscience, Geophysics suggested that the ancient atmosphere suddenly became enriched with oxygen due to the earth’s tectonic activity. The new study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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