Science Daily June 9, 2020
A team of researchers in the US (University of Washington, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Maryland, Arizona State University) combined data with evidence from ancient sedimentary rocks to show a tipping point sometime after 2.5 billion years ago, when oxygen produced by microbes overcame its loss to volcanic gases and began to accumulate in the atmosphere during the Great Oxidation Event. The data demonstrates that an evolution of the mantle of the Earth could control an evolution of the atmosphere of the Earth, and possibly an evolution of life as multicellular life needs a concentrated supply of oxygen, so the accumulation of oxygen is key to the evolution of oxygen-breathing life on Earth. The study indicates that we cannot exclude the mantle of a planet when considering the evolution of the surface and life of the planet…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Evolution of the oxygen fugacity of mantle. Credit: Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 2774 (2020)