NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “oxygen

  2. Oxygen in Earth's Early Atmosphere


    Researchers from NAI’s Carnegie Institution of Washington Team have a paper in this week’s Nature describing evidence that Earth’s Mesoarchean atmosphere (3.2 and 2.8 Gya) possessed very low amounts oxygen. These findings contrast with prior claims that Earth’s atmosphere underwent its first rise in oxygen during the Mesoarchean, and indicate that oxygen first rose above parts per million levels sometime between 2.45 and 2.4 billion years ago.

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  3. Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere Before Great Oxidation Event


    NAI’s Astrobiology Drilling Program supported researchers in 2004 to obtain subsurface core samples from the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia. Those samples, representing the time just before the Great Oxidation Event, have been analyzed, and two research papers detailing the results (Anbar, et al. and Kaufman, et al.) appear in September 28, 2007 issue of Science. Both groups found unexpected, correlated changes that reveal the presence of small but significant amounts of O2 in the environment 2.5 billion years...

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  4. Subaerial Volcanoes Shift Oxygen Levels on Early Earth


    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...

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  5. Biogeochemistry and Oxygenic Photosynthesis


    Researchers from NAI’s University of Colorado, Boulder Team recently reported in Earth and Planetary Science Letters their new biogeochemical model relating to the Great Oxidation Event. With ion microprobe data for individual sulfides from water-lain sedimentary units in the 2.45–2.22 Ga Huronian Supergroup, the team proposes a new model where enhanced weathering rates during interglacial thawing stimulated blooms of oxygenic photosynthesis, the demise of methane, and ultimately the irreversible rise in atmospheric oxygen between the first and second Huronian...

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  6. Oxygen and Life in the Precambrian


    The December 2006 issue of Geobiology is a collection of papers focusing on the history of Earth’s biogeochemistry, from the earliest sedimentary rocks in Greenland to the late Proterozoic. The rise of atmospheric oxygen provides a thematic link. The papers in this issue, edited by David Catling and Roger Buick of NAI’s University of Washington Alumni Team, grew out of a session of the Earth System Processes 2 conference in Calgary, Canada, 8–11 August 2005, sponsored by the

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  7. Romer's Gap Confirmed


    Peter Ward from NAI’s Alumni Team at the University of Washington and his collaborators have a new paper out in PNAS this week providing supportive evidence for Romer’s Gap. Their results link this gap in vertebrate terrestrialization with a low atmospheric oxygen interval. This paper supports Ward’s new book on the evolution of effective respiratory systems, entitled “Out of Thin Air.”

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  8. Further Studies on the Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen


    Lee Kump of NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Lead Team is co-author on a new paper in GSA Today examining the rise of atmospheric oxygen at the Archean-Proterozoic transition, 2.5-2.0 billion years ago. The team of international researchers studied sedimentary and volcanic rocks from the Fennoscandian Shield, which provides a fairly complete record of the hallmark events of that transition.

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  9. More on the Rise of Earth's Oxygen Levels


    A new paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters from NAI’s Carnegie Institution of Washington Lead Team and NAI’s International Partner, the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, explores environmental changes during the rise of atmospheric oxygen and the relationship between tectonics, atmospheric oxygen, and climatic changes.

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