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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 April 2019 and 28 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): PLin AB. Peer reviewers: Lmfifer.
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I have an MSc in Physics and I think this page is way too technical, or unfortunately is written in a way that makes it much less interesting. (no offence to the hard working souls who created it). There is a huge middle section that goes off on a technical tangent about a time lag, and only near the end do we get to the explanation of what actually happened. It also seems that there is no mention at all of the Snowball Earth or how the snowball earth was eventually broken by more microbes that evolved to consume oxygen and create carbon dioxide. I found the DamnInteresting page on this event to be much more readable. It follows events chronologically and explains cause and effect in less technical language, as opposed to explaining one or two technical points in verbose detail. ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=673#more-673) 69.156.113.62 04:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Before a hyper-technical term like "oxy-photosynthesis" appears in a sub-title, it MUST be defined! I myself am shakey as to what the writer here actually meant by this difficult-to-pronounce scientistic term. Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 01:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The "Great Oxygenation Event" (G.O.E.) has the SAME colored visual or line-graph that appears at the START of the " Geological history of oxygen", a much-better and more readable Wiki article.
However, we need some illustrations for G.O.E. So either we should (1) colorfully revise the current graphic as -- say -- a differently-colored histogram/barchart, or (2) come up with better alternative illustrations -- e.g., a diagram, flow-chart, photo, cartoon, artwork, or colorful data.
The illustrated subject could be Cyanobacteria, fossil Stromatolites, Aerial castrophe, Oxygenation, Banded iron formations, Oxidation, Extinction events, or whatever...
For more ideas, I recommend Prof. Edward Tufte's colorful how-to books on how to present statistics, science and history.
In short, we should avoid redundancy, plagiarism, dejavu, and confusion with the other article(s). And I'm way too old and too retired to fuss with all the details... Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 02:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It would be useful to mention that the cause of the oxygen build up was the evolution of photosynthesising cyanobacteria from earlier photosynthesising sulphur bacteria. Photosynthesising sulphur bacteria use sunlight to split Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) molecules to produce sulphur, but cyanobacteria modified this process to split water (H20)molecules to produce oxygen. RV 4 March 2007
This 2006 paper by Heinrich Holland lucidly reviews the subjects covered in this article. Professor Holland has kindly released figure 10 from his article under GFDL, for us to be able to use it in Wikipedia. These graphs illustrate the estimated evolution of atmospheric and the concentration of O2 in the shallow and deep oceans. Your assistance is now needed to adapt these graphs for use in Wikipedia, and update our articles with the information provided in the said paper. Regards, Lior 17:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I thought that ozone layer appeared 500 millions years ago, when land became habitable (see Timeline of evolution). However this article relates its appearance with the much earlier Oxygen Catastrophe. Is it a real discrepancy, or are we talking about two different phases in its forming (i.e. for a stable 21% oxygen atmosphere one needs a much thinner ozone layer compared to the one needed for the land to become habitable)? Dan Gluck 09:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it was a specific event that can have this title.
IceDragon64 ( talk) 20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Me too. -- Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 01:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
What does 'A', 'B', and 'C' in the image caption refer to? There are no such labels in the image itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.228.39.223 ( talk) 08:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Oxygen Catastrophe to oxygen catastrophe
I didn't find anything that actually explained what was so catastrophic to justify the title. What/how much actually happened ? Did existing lifeforms disappear, move underground, evolve ? Anaerobic organisms still exist. The availability of O2 seems more like a great opportunity than a catastrophe. Rcbutcher ( talk) 02:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The rising oxygen levels wiped out a huge portion of Earth's inhabitants at the time. From their perspective it was a catastrophe. Cyanobacteria were essentially responsible for probably the largest extinction event in Earth's history. Eris Discord | Talk 02:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Now that's exactly what should be in the article! ;) BenJury ( talk) 13:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
IceDragon64 ( talk) 23:17, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro Lamo ( talk • contribs) 07:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
Recent publications suggest we need to re-examine the whole idea of an "oxygen catastrophe". I'm going to start collecting sources here, with brief notes. If we get enough, it may be necessary to re-organise the list into sub-sections. Please contribute, using a similar format. If you wish to discuss any of these items, please do so in separate sections, so that this remains a simple list.-- Philcha ( talk) 12:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
-- Philcha ( talk) 14:24, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that if we can settle that there was not a Catastrophe, then the bulk of the article, describing what actually happened, should move to Atmospheric oxygenation event. It doesn't really matter whether anyone has used it before or anything, so long as it establishes the truth as accurately as we know. I think that a small article should remain here about the original idea, that it was "The biggest extinction in history" or whatever, and showing any key research which discredits this- linked to a main article over there. I have been bold and created the page, in brief, wikidragon fashion.
IceDragon64 ( talk) 20:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I do not understand, why the Title here is "Great Oxygenation Event", while specialists like H. Holland (in
ref.1) call it Great Oxidation Event" - my english is not the best (sorry for this) but shouldn't we call things like this as Specialists do it? --
Hartmann Schedel
cheers
12:14, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Am I missing something? There are two different coloured lines on the graph and only one atmostpheric constituant discussed, so what does the other line mean and which is which?
IceDragon64 ( talk) 21:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
One of them is O2 pressure, the other is O2 concentration in ocean surface waters. But which is which? 131.111.85.79 ( talk) 15:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
This is intended as a stub until either I or anyone else can fully illustrate the significance of this portion.
By many accounts, the Drake Equation is roughly 13 to 14 orders of magnitude higher than we are experiencing, taken even for when the anecdotially reported myriad forms of intelligent extraterrestrial life are accounted, totalling roughly more than one, perhaps 10, and far fewer than 100 distinctly differeing species. In order to rectify the Equation, I postulate that the condition of the earliest times of the planetary evolutionary cycles be admitted as another variable to the Drake Equation, somewhere between fℓ and fi, considering the exegesis of particularly protozoan life from those same conditions on early planet Earth.
This is not necessarily a case of making the equation fit the data results, although it appears to be exactly so.
It is my hypothesis that this hypothetical Great Oxygenation Event, which seems to have formed the Ozone Layer, atmospheric and oceanic oxygen, and many useful minerals for life on Earth, could happen only extremely rarely, and could perhaps wholly account for the remaining roughly 1/10,000,000,000,000 (1 in 10 quadrillion) chance that life evolved here and not everywhere else. The quantification of the rarity of this event would help to define one element of the proposed additional variable to establish a realistic number for the Drake Equation. The additional rarity of the progression of life on Earth to anti-photosynthetic form could possibly have been predicated by a disruption of another extremely large impactor into the atmosphere, and is also deserved another element of this proposed variable, although these two do not comprise the exclusivity of that variable.
This other part of the entire hypothesis is that it appears to me that the entirety of the Canadian Shield, including Greenland, seems to be formed from a giant impactor which formed the crater now known as most of the Hudson Bay area. I would like it if more research was done to confirm or deny whether or not the Hudson Bay area in general, and the Canadian Shield at large is the result of a rather large and early (c.2,700M-3,400M years ago) impactor against the surface and early atmosphere of the Earth. When one compares the Canadian Shield to the Hellas Basin on the surface of Mars, the geological similarities are convincingly striking, albeit in roughly half the size, and although certainly not conclusive. More work, specifically using core samples from various locations surrounding the Hudson Bay area, would be requisite to begin to either confirm or deny this hypothesis.
The number for this variable may be revised upward if we do find through telescopic radiometry and spectrography a larger prevalence of oxygenated worlds in other solar systems within the galaxy.
This section in its entirety is being cited as an original derivative work, from my own making.
This is all posted as a postualtive, and not under copyright, although attribution would be appreciated under Creative Commons License.
IllegalKnowledge ( talk) 14:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Michael Oatman (IllegalKnowledge@gmail.com)
Why not 2.4 billion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.230.200.94 ( talk) 20:59, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The article does not make clear what the current consensus is about the total atmospheric composition before, during, and after the event. Meaning percentage of nitrogen, carbon oxides, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, noble gases, etc., as well as the rise in free oxygen. It's odd to see, for example, a paragraph about the reduction in atmospheric nickel without actual numbers for the much larger constituents. -- 173.76.64.248 ( talk) 21:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
This article does not address the theory that this event was caused by volcanic changes rather than cyanobacteria. For example, see this article in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7368/full/nature10460.html or the studies of H.D. Holland (Harvard). It appears that there is some debate in the scientific literature over what actually caused this event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.168.103 ( talk) 15:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
In the timeline in the "Role in mineral diversification" section, the Quaternary period spills over onto its own row (at least in my browser), where it is aligned with a large chunk of the early Paleoproterozoic era. This is obviously very misleading, but I don't understand the timeline template well enough to fix it. Can someone help? Ravi12346 ( talk) 21:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Most of the information under "Timing" is covered again immediately afterword in the "Time Lag Theory" section. Can these sections be combined, or else differentiated more? 67.51.110.77 ( talk) 15:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
{{
Horizontal timeline}}
perhaps I've just misunderstood it (in which case it could do with more labels). EdwardLane ( talk) 12:24, 30 May 2013 (UTC) Quaternary is definitely in the wrong place in this drawing as displayed on my browser - it is shown on the far left, at the most distant time from the present, which doesn't make any sense if you follow the links. Perhaps it has wrapped around? Jintian ( talk) 19:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
eons
periods
ok looks like periods is the template that has gone wrong, documentation is not present, so here's my best attempt at fixing it so far
but it's still not right as, for example 'The Cenozoic is divided into three periods: The Paleogene, Neogene, and Quaternary;' but those are not lined up.
{{
Horizontal timeline}}
looks like this is beyond my skills, so I've put a request on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates#Template_horizontal_timelines . EdwardLane ( talk) 07:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Oxygen started appearing in the atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago, yet the Cambrian Explosion did not occur until much later around 550 million years ago. This page says oxygenation allowed diversification, but does not mention the time gap between the two. It would be helpful just to have a little clarification with that. Kkennedy657 ( talk) 22:13, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Quote: It took 100 million years for oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere to increase to the level that allowed the explosion of animal life on Earth about 600 million years ago - See more at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1215/181215-earth-oxygenation prokaryotes ( talk) 21:45, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
In the section "Late evolution of oxy-photosynthesis theory", a term is introduced yet not explained. I Googled this term, and found that it has its origin in this Wikipedia article, and that all references to the "marine sulfur pool" anywhere on the Web are clones of this article. If anyone knows what is meant by "homogenization of the marine sulfur pool" and can rewrite this paragraph using less-obscure wording, they would do the world a favor. The cited article from PNAS uses the term "homogenization of the S pool"; unfortunately that article is beyond my comprehension, and the term "homogenization of the S pool" is unique to this article.-- 97.120.35.87 ( talk) 18:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
Is there at least a source for that name being in even occasional use? It seems like a ludicrous appropriation of a phrase that specifically refers to intentional genocide. 86.149.158.184 ( talk) 10:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
In 1999, the late Heinrich Holland (then a Professor at Harvard University) named the first rise of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic the "Great Oxidation Event" [1] and this is the common usage by virtually all of other scientists in this area. Later, Holland (2006) specifically defines it: "the period between 2.4 and 2.0 Ga has become known as the Great Oxidation Event". A recent review in Nature by Lyons et al. says the step increase is "now popularly know as the Great Oxidation Event or GOE" [2]. In another scholarly review of the topic by Catling (2014), "Great Oxidation Event" is used in the title (which is a dead giveaway as to what the correct name is). [3] Surely, it is unacceptable that this wikipedia page, written by people who have done none of the original research on the topic (unlike Holland or Lyons et al. or Catling or others), decide to rename the GOE the Great Oxygenation Event? I also agree with the comment above about questioning use of the phrase "oxygen holocaust", which is similarly unjustified. In fact, the over-emphasis on "oxygen catastrophe" on the page is unsupported by evidence. But my main point is that the page name needs to be changed to Great Oxidation Event as a matter of accuracy and to reflect the common, consensus definition of 'GOE' in the scientific literature. This point has been made earlier (see Hartmann Schedel) above and was ignored. I'm adding to his argument to say that what he said is obviously and unequivocally correct. Charliecat1 ( talk) 04:51, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
The link given to the article "Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry", was broken. This one works for me Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro Lamo ( talk • contribs) 07:13, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
References
The increased production of oxygen set Earth's original atmosphere off balance.
In my experience, "balance" has more truck in Humorism than in geophysics or ecology. A more precise word is "equilibrium". By virtue of being more precise, one can immediately see why it shouldn't be used here (to usefully discuss an "equilibrium" requires a broadly accepted mathematical framework, which I doubt we have concerning the earth's conditions at 3 Gya).
"Brought a new dynamic into play" would be a rough order of magnitude less grievous, which perhaps brings it into the territory of the barely palatable. — MaxEnt 16:29, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
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"Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter. The GOE was the point in time when these oxygen sinks became saturated, at which point oxygen, produced by the cyanobacteria, was free to escape into the atmosphere."
It looks like there must have been two overlapping phases to the oxidation event: oxidation of minerals dissolved in water, and oxidation of land minerals. The paragraph above discusses water, while another paragraph discusses land rock, but there doesn't seem to be anything joining the two, so that if you don't notice you may think that the oxidation only applied to one. Scott McNay ( talk) 18:31, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
"Two-billion-year-old salt rock reveals rise of oxygen in ancient atmosphere". Princeton. 22 March 2018. 2001:BB6:4703:4A58:ED30:9F33:3B3:D255 ( talk) 16:07, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Although many biology sources state this as a fact, the evidence isn't that strong. Nick Lane put it like this [1]:
"Microbes are not equivalent to large animals: their population sizes are enormously larger, and they pass around useful genes (such as those for antibiotic resistance) by lateral transfer, making them very much less vulnerable to extinction. There is no hint of any microbial extinction even in the aftermath of the Great Oxygenation Event. The 'oxygen holocaust', which supposedly wiped out most anaerobic cells, can't be traced at all; there is no evidence from either phylogenetics or geochemistry that such an extinction ever took place. On the contrary, anaerobes prospered."
I think this viewpoint should be mentioned Robert Walker ( talk) 16:45, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Regarding the latest 'citation needed' tag: an alternative explanation to an 'oxygen holocaust' might be that the anaerobic cells were less efficient at survival, in the face of competition from the cyanobacteria. In the face of the competitive advantage of the cyanobacteria over a billion years, the niches for anaerobic cells might have been simply outnumbered after a loss of habitat, from the development of multicellular organisms, according to Schirrmeister et.al. (2015) "Cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event: evidence from genes and fossils". Might this possibility, of an indirect result, be included in the article. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:53, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
I still maintain that a lot of literature etc. was created with the idea that it was a Catastrophe and an Extinction, so some clear reference to this piece of scientific history- an explanation of why they thought it was and why we don't think it is now, should be made, with a subtitle of one or other of these titles. IceDragon64 ( talk) 23:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved — Amakuru ( talk) 08:06, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Great Oxygenation Event → Great Oxidation Event – Great Oxidation Event is the commonly used term in scientific paper and sources PLin AB ( talk) 06:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
The abstract of the paywalled source does not say rise in O2 caused extinctions. Rather, it notes that an extinction is observed in the fossil record, and suggests that hiccups in phosphorous availability was to blame. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
First issue: /info/en/?search=File:Oxygenation-atm-2.svg refers in stage 3 to the absorption of oxygen after outgassing. However, there are virtually no further details about this in the main text. Second issue: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1900325116 finds large decrease in nutrients supplied to the biosphere that, in turn, marked the conclusion of the GOE. There is also no description of this in the main text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2454:8D55:500:CE2:26BF:E8DB:6FDE ( talk) 07:02, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 April 2019 and 28 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): PLin AB. Peer reviewers: Lmfifer.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 21:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 9 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aseja Dava.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 22:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I have an MSc in Physics and I think this page is way too technical, or unfortunately is written in a way that makes it much less interesting. (no offence to the hard working souls who created it). There is a huge middle section that goes off on a technical tangent about a time lag, and only near the end do we get to the explanation of what actually happened. It also seems that there is no mention at all of the Snowball Earth or how the snowball earth was eventually broken by more microbes that evolved to consume oxygen and create carbon dioxide. I found the DamnInteresting page on this event to be much more readable. It follows events chronologically and explains cause and effect in less technical language, as opposed to explaining one or two technical points in verbose detail. ( http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=673#more-673) 69.156.113.62 04:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Before a hyper-technical term like "oxy-photosynthesis" appears in a sub-title, it MUST be defined! I myself am shakey as to what the writer here actually meant by this difficult-to-pronounce scientistic term. Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 01:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The "Great Oxygenation Event" (G.O.E.) has the SAME colored visual or line-graph that appears at the START of the " Geological history of oxygen", a much-better and more readable Wiki article.
However, we need some illustrations for G.O.E. So either we should (1) colorfully revise the current graphic as -- say -- a differently-colored histogram/barchart, or (2) come up with better alternative illustrations -- e.g., a diagram, flow-chart, photo, cartoon, artwork, or colorful data.
The illustrated subject could be Cyanobacteria, fossil Stromatolites, Aerial castrophe, Oxygenation, Banded iron formations, Oxidation, Extinction events, or whatever...
For more ideas, I recommend Prof. Edward Tufte's colorful how-to books on how to present statistics, science and history.
In short, we should avoid redundancy, plagiarism, dejavu, and confusion with the other article(s). And I'm way too old and too retired to fuss with all the details... Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 02:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It would be useful to mention that the cause of the oxygen build up was the evolution of photosynthesising cyanobacteria from earlier photosynthesising sulphur bacteria. Photosynthesising sulphur bacteria use sunlight to split Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) molecules to produce sulphur, but cyanobacteria modified this process to split water (H20)molecules to produce oxygen. RV 4 March 2007
This 2006 paper by Heinrich Holland lucidly reviews the subjects covered in this article. Professor Holland has kindly released figure 10 from his article under GFDL, for us to be able to use it in Wikipedia. These graphs illustrate the estimated evolution of atmospheric and the concentration of O2 in the shallow and deep oceans. Your assistance is now needed to adapt these graphs for use in Wikipedia, and update our articles with the information provided in the said paper. Regards, Lior 17:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I thought that ozone layer appeared 500 millions years ago, when land became habitable (see Timeline of evolution). However this article relates its appearance with the much earlier Oxygen Catastrophe. Is it a real discrepancy, or are we talking about two different phases in its forming (i.e. for a stable 21% oxygen atmosphere one needs a much thinner ozone layer compared to the one needed for the land to become habitable)? Dan Gluck 09:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it was a specific event that can have this title.
IceDragon64 ( talk) 20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Me too. -- Dr.Bastedo ( talk) 01:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
What does 'A', 'B', and 'C' in the image caption refer to? There are no such labels in the image itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.228.39.223 ( talk) 08:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Oxygen Catastrophe to oxygen catastrophe
I didn't find anything that actually explained what was so catastrophic to justify the title. What/how much actually happened ? Did existing lifeforms disappear, move underground, evolve ? Anaerobic organisms still exist. The availability of O2 seems more like a great opportunity than a catastrophe. Rcbutcher ( talk) 02:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The rising oxygen levels wiped out a huge portion of Earth's inhabitants at the time. From their perspective it was a catastrophe. Cyanobacteria were essentially responsible for probably the largest extinction event in Earth's history. Eris Discord | Talk 02:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Now that's exactly what should be in the article! ;) BenJury ( talk) 13:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
IceDragon64 ( talk) 23:17, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro Lamo ( talk • contribs) 07:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
Recent publications suggest we need to re-examine the whole idea of an "oxygen catastrophe". I'm going to start collecting sources here, with brief notes. If we get enough, it may be necessary to re-organise the list into sub-sections. Please contribute, using a similar format. If you wish to discuss any of these items, please do so in separate sections, so that this remains a simple list.-- Philcha ( talk) 12:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
-- Philcha ( talk) 14:24, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that if we can settle that there was not a Catastrophe, then the bulk of the article, describing what actually happened, should move to Atmospheric oxygenation event. It doesn't really matter whether anyone has used it before or anything, so long as it establishes the truth as accurately as we know. I think that a small article should remain here about the original idea, that it was "The biggest extinction in history" or whatever, and showing any key research which discredits this- linked to a main article over there. I have been bold and created the page, in brief, wikidragon fashion.
IceDragon64 ( talk) 20:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I do not understand, why the Title here is "Great Oxygenation Event", while specialists like H. Holland (in
ref.1) call it Great Oxidation Event" - my english is not the best (sorry for this) but shouldn't we call things like this as Specialists do it? --
Hartmann Schedel
cheers
12:14, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Am I missing something? There are two different coloured lines on the graph and only one atmostpheric constituant discussed, so what does the other line mean and which is which?
IceDragon64 ( talk) 21:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
One of them is O2 pressure, the other is O2 concentration in ocean surface waters. But which is which? 131.111.85.79 ( talk) 15:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
This is intended as a stub until either I or anyone else can fully illustrate the significance of this portion.
By many accounts, the Drake Equation is roughly 13 to 14 orders of magnitude higher than we are experiencing, taken even for when the anecdotially reported myriad forms of intelligent extraterrestrial life are accounted, totalling roughly more than one, perhaps 10, and far fewer than 100 distinctly differeing species. In order to rectify the Equation, I postulate that the condition of the earliest times of the planetary evolutionary cycles be admitted as another variable to the Drake Equation, somewhere between fℓ and fi, considering the exegesis of particularly protozoan life from those same conditions on early planet Earth.
This is not necessarily a case of making the equation fit the data results, although it appears to be exactly so.
It is my hypothesis that this hypothetical Great Oxygenation Event, which seems to have formed the Ozone Layer, atmospheric and oceanic oxygen, and many useful minerals for life on Earth, could happen only extremely rarely, and could perhaps wholly account for the remaining roughly 1/10,000,000,000,000 (1 in 10 quadrillion) chance that life evolved here and not everywhere else. The quantification of the rarity of this event would help to define one element of the proposed additional variable to establish a realistic number for the Drake Equation. The additional rarity of the progression of life on Earth to anti-photosynthetic form could possibly have been predicated by a disruption of another extremely large impactor into the atmosphere, and is also deserved another element of this proposed variable, although these two do not comprise the exclusivity of that variable.
This other part of the entire hypothesis is that it appears to me that the entirety of the Canadian Shield, including Greenland, seems to be formed from a giant impactor which formed the crater now known as most of the Hudson Bay area. I would like it if more research was done to confirm or deny whether or not the Hudson Bay area in general, and the Canadian Shield at large is the result of a rather large and early (c.2,700M-3,400M years ago) impactor against the surface and early atmosphere of the Earth. When one compares the Canadian Shield to the Hellas Basin on the surface of Mars, the geological similarities are convincingly striking, albeit in roughly half the size, and although certainly not conclusive. More work, specifically using core samples from various locations surrounding the Hudson Bay area, would be requisite to begin to either confirm or deny this hypothesis.
The number for this variable may be revised upward if we do find through telescopic radiometry and spectrography a larger prevalence of oxygenated worlds in other solar systems within the galaxy.
This section in its entirety is being cited as an original derivative work, from my own making.
This is all posted as a postualtive, and not under copyright, although attribution would be appreciated under Creative Commons License.
IllegalKnowledge ( talk) 14:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Michael Oatman (IllegalKnowledge@gmail.com)
Why not 2.4 billion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.230.200.94 ( talk) 20:59, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
The article does not make clear what the current consensus is about the total atmospheric composition before, during, and after the event. Meaning percentage of nitrogen, carbon oxides, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, noble gases, etc., as well as the rise in free oxygen. It's odd to see, for example, a paragraph about the reduction in atmospheric nickel without actual numbers for the much larger constituents. -- 173.76.64.248 ( talk) 21:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
This article does not address the theory that this event was caused by volcanic changes rather than cyanobacteria. For example, see this article in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7368/full/nature10460.html or the studies of H.D. Holland (Harvard). It appears that there is some debate in the scientific literature over what actually caused this event. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.168.103 ( talk) 15:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
In the timeline in the "Role in mineral diversification" section, the Quaternary period spills over onto its own row (at least in my browser), where it is aligned with a large chunk of the early Paleoproterozoic era. This is obviously very misleading, but I don't understand the timeline template well enough to fix it. Can someone help? Ravi12346 ( talk) 21:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Most of the information under "Timing" is covered again immediately afterword in the "Time Lag Theory" section. Can these sections be combined, or else differentiated more? 67.51.110.77 ( talk) 15:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
{{
Horizontal timeline}}
perhaps I've just misunderstood it (in which case it could do with more labels). EdwardLane ( talk) 12:24, 30 May 2013 (UTC) Quaternary is definitely in the wrong place in this drawing as displayed on my browser - it is shown on the far left, at the most distant time from the present, which doesn't make any sense if you follow the links. Perhaps it has wrapped around? Jintian ( talk) 19:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
eons
periods
ok looks like periods is the template that has gone wrong, documentation is not present, so here's my best attempt at fixing it so far
but it's still not right as, for example 'The Cenozoic is divided into three periods: The Paleogene, Neogene, and Quaternary;' but those are not lined up.
{{
Horizontal timeline}}
looks like this is beyond my skills, so I've put a request on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates#Template_horizontal_timelines . EdwardLane ( talk) 07:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Oxygen started appearing in the atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago, yet the Cambrian Explosion did not occur until much later around 550 million years ago. This page says oxygenation allowed diversification, but does not mention the time gap between the two. It would be helpful just to have a little clarification with that. Kkennedy657 ( talk) 22:13, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Quote: It took 100 million years for oxygen levels in the oceans and atmosphere to increase to the level that allowed the explosion of animal life on Earth about 600 million years ago - See more at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1215/181215-earth-oxygenation prokaryotes ( talk) 21:45, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
In the section "Late evolution of oxy-photosynthesis theory", a term is introduced yet not explained. I Googled this term, and found that it has its origin in this Wikipedia article, and that all references to the "marine sulfur pool" anywhere on the Web are clones of this article. If anyone knows what is meant by "homogenization of the marine sulfur pool" and can rewrite this paragraph using less-obscure wording, they would do the world a favor. The cited article from PNAS uses the term "homogenization of the S pool"; unfortunately that article is beyond my comprehension, and the term "homogenization of the S pool" is unique to this article.-- 97.120.35.87 ( talk) 18:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
Is there at least a source for that name being in even occasional use? It seems like a ludicrous appropriation of a phrase that specifically refers to intentional genocide. 86.149.158.184 ( talk) 10:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
In 1999, the late Heinrich Holland (then a Professor at Harvard University) named the first rise of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic the "Great Oxidation Event" [1] and this is the common usage by virtually all of other scientists in this area. Later, Holland (2006) specifically defines it: "the period between 2.4 and 2.0 Ga has become known as the Great Oxidation Event". A recent review in Nature by Lyons et al. says the step increase is "now popularly know as the Great Oxidation Event or GOE" [2]. In another scholarly review of the topic by Catling (2014), "Great Oxidation Event" is used in the title (which is a dead giveaway as to what the correct name is). [3] Surely, it is unacceptable that this wikipedia page, written by people who have done none of the original research on the topic (unlike Holland or Lyons et al. or Catling or others), decide to rename the GOE the Great Oxygenation Event? I also agree with the comment above about questioning use of the phrase "oxygen holocaust", which is similarly unjustified. In fact, the over-emphasis on "oxygen catastrophe" on the page is unsupported by evidence. But my main point is that the page name needs to be changed to Great Oxidation Event as a matter of accuracy and to reflect the common, consensus definition of 'GOE' in the scientific literature. This point has been made earlier (see Hartmann Schedel) above and was ignored. I'm adding to his argument to say that what he said is obviously and unequivocally correct. Charliecat1 ( talk) 04:51, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
The link given to the article "Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry", was broken. This one works for me Energy metabolism among eukaryotic anaerobes in light of Proterozoic ocean chemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro Lamo ( talk • contribs) 07:13, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
References
The increased production of oxygen set Earth's original atmosphere off balance.
In my experience, "balance" has more truck in Humorism than in geophysics or ecology. A more precise word is "equilibrium". By virtue of being more precise, one can immediately see why it shouldn't be used here (to usefully discuss an "equilibrium" requires a broadly accepted mathematical framework, which I doubt we have concerning the earth's conditions at 3 Gya).
"Brought a new dynamic into play" would be a rough order of magnitude less grievous, which perhaps brings it into the territory of the barely palatable. — MaxEnt 16:29, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
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"Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter. The GOE was the point in time when these oxygen sinks became saturated, at which point oxygen, produced by the cyanobacteria, was free to escape into the atmosphere."
It looks like there must have been two overlapping phases to the oxidation event: oxidation of minerals dissolved in water, and oxidation of land minerals. The paragraph above discusses water, while another paragraph discusses land rock, but there doesn't seem to be anything joining the two, so that if you don't notice you may think that the oxidation only applied to one. Scott McNay ( talk) 18:31, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
"Two-billion-year-old salt rock reveals rise of oxygen in ancient atmosphere". Princeton. 22 March 2018. 2001:BB6:4703:4A58:ED30:9F33:3B3:D255 ( talk) 16:07, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Although many biology sources state this as a fact, the evidence isn't that strong. Nick Lane put it like this [1]:
"Microbes are not equivalent to large animals: their population sizes are enormously larger, and they pass around useful genes (such as those for antibiotic resistance) by lateral transfer, making them very much less vulnerable to extinction. There is no hint of any microbial extinction even in the aftermath of the Great Oxygenation Event. The 'oxygen holocaust', which supposedly wiped out most anaerobic cells, can't be traced at all; there is no evidence from either phylogenetics or geochemistry that such an extinction ever took place. On the contrary, anaerobes prospered."
I think this viewpoint should be mentioned Robert Walker ( talk) 16:45, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Regarding the latest 'citation needed' tag: an alternative explanation to an 'oxygen holocaust' might be that the anaerobic cells were less efficient at survival, in the face of competition from the cyanobacteria. In the face of the competitive advantage of the cyanobacteria over a billion years, the niches for anaerobic cells might have been simply outnumbered after a loss of habitat, from the development of multicellular organisms, according to Schirrmeister et.al. (2015) "Cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event: evidence from genes and fossils". Might this possibility, of an indirect result, be included in the article. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:53, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
I still maintain that a lot of literature etc. was created with the idea that it was a Catastrophe and an Extinction, so some clear reference to this piece of scientific history- an explanation of why they thought it was and why we don't think it is now, should be made, with a subtitle of one or other of these titles. IceDragon64 ( talk) 23:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved — Amakuru ( talk) 08:06, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Great Oxygenation Event → Great Oxidation Event – Great Oxidation Event is the commonly used term in scientific paper and sources PLin AB ( talk) 06:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
The abstract of the paywalled source does not say rise in O2 caused extinctions. Rather, it notes that an extinction is observed in the fossil record, and suggests that hiccups in phosphorous availability was to blame. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
First issue: /info/en/?search=File:Oxygenation-atm-2.svg refers in stage 3 to the absorption of oxygen after outgassing. However, there are virtually no further details about this in the main text. Second issue: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1900325116 finds large decrease in nutrients supplied to the biosphere that, in turn, marked the conclusion of the GOE. There is also no description of this in the main text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2454:8D55:500:CE2:26BF:E8DB:6FDE ( talk) 07:02, 24 June 2023 (UTC)