The Great Oxidation Event was the transformation of Earth's atmosphere from a state practically devoid of oxygen to one containing abundant free oxygen, beginning about 2.46 to 2.426 billion years ago and concluding around 2.06 billion years ago in the Paleoproterozoic era. It was driven by cyanobacteria that had evolved oxygen producing photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as a byproduct of splitting water molecules, and by the event's end atmospheric oxygen had reached roughly 10 percent of today's level. The sudden appearance of reactive free oxygen is thought to have caused a mass die off of many anaerobic microorganisms adapted to the old atmosphere, but it also opened the way for new biological diversification, eventually enabling the eukaryotic cells and aerobic metabolism that complex life depends on.
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Great Oxidation Event (Wikipedia)
In Discipline: Geochronology, Lead paragraph
The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) or Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Revolution, Oxygen Crisis, or Oxygen Holocaust, was a time interval during the Earth's Paleoproterozoic era when the Earth's atmosphere and shallow seas first experienced a rise in the concentration of free oxygen.
In Group: Precambrian Glaciations and Oxygenation, Lead sentence
The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) or Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Revolution, Oxygen Crisis, or Oxygen Holocaust, was a time interval during the Earth's Paleoproterozoic era when the Earth's atmosphere and shallow seas first experienced a rise in the concentration of free oxygen.
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