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- Buried for 1.7 Billion Years: These Ancient Fossils May Rewrite the Story of Complex Life
Buried for 1.7 Billion Years: These Ancient Fossils May Rewrite the Story of Complex Life
Ancient Oceans Began Losing Oxygen Millions of Years before End-Triassic Mass Extinction
Chemical traces preserved in ancient rocks indicate that marine environments were deteriorating long before the catastrophe that wiped out vast numbers of species at the end of the Triassic period, around 201 million years ago.
The post Ancient Oceans Began Losing Oxygen Millions of Years before End-Triassic Mass Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Dark Oxygen Discovery Challenges Lifeβs Evolutionary Origins



The Essential Role of Carbon in Lifeβs Chemistry






Clouds Confuse Climate Cult Catastrophe Claims




Study: Early Complex Life Forms Were Bottom-Dwellers
Analyzing 1.75-billion-year-old microfossils from ancient Australian seabeds, paleontologists say ancient eukaryotes -- the ancestors of every plant, animal and fungus -- huddled in oxygenated seafloor patches for over a billion years before breaking free into open water.
The post Study: Early Complex Life Forms Were Bottom-Dwellers appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Want an oxygen-rich atmosphere? Stuff oxygenβs friends in the mantle.
Planet Earth has some pretty great qualities going for it. (Negative reviews mostly revolve around the staff and clientele.) Pretty high on the list of positives is a richly oxygenated atmosphere. But thatβs something that evolved and built up over a couple billion years, only eventually resulting in a world conducive to animal life like us.
Scientists have many ideas about what could have caused oxygen to increase, and it seems that a number of them are probably correct. No one thing in isolation seems to explain it. Life is part of the story, with photosynthetic life pumping out oxygen. The chemistry of the solid Earth also had a role to play, both through supporting photosynthetic life and through reactions that can shuttle oxygen between the atmosphere and rocks deep inside the Earth.
A new study led by Wei Shi of the Chengdu University of Technology suggests that evidence of changes in the subduction of tectonic platesβthe process by which they disappear down into Earthβs interiorβlines up with the timing of jumps in oxygen levels.


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