New research could change the way scientists view early life and evolution on Earth, with the recent discovery that oxygen appeared about 700 million years earlier than previously thought.
According to a news release from the University of British Columbia (UBC), researchers examined soil from South Africa believed to be the oldest soil on Earth. From the soil, the team suggests oxygen was present on the planet before the Great Oxygenation Event of 2.3 billion years ago.
"We've always known that oxygen production by photosynthesis led to the eventual oxygenation of the atmosphere and the evolution of aerobic life," said Sean Crowe, co-lead author and assistant professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC.
Crowe and his fellow lead author, Lasse Døssing, of the University of Copenhagen, published their work Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"This study now suggests that the process began very early in Earth's history, supporting a much greater antiquity for oxygen producing photosynthesis and aerobic life," said Crowe.
Earth did not have oxygen when it first formed and did not become oxygenated for some hundreds of millions of years. Today, the Earth is made up 20 percent of oxygen due to photosynthetic bacteria, such as trees and plants that intake carbon dioxide and re-release it into the atmosphere as oxygen.
"These findings imply that it took a very long time for geological and biological processes to conspire and produce the oxygen rich atmosphere we now enjoy," said Døssing.
Crowe told LiveScience further research can be done with similarly aged rocks and soil on or outside of Earth.
"It's exciting that it took a relatively short time for oxygenic photosynthesis to evolve on Earth," Crowe added. "It means that it could happen on other planets on Earth, expanding the number of worlds that could've developed oxygenated atmospheres and complex oxygen-breathing life."
