A new research says that tectonic plates smashed into each other, reshaping supercontinents such as Pangaea, leading to increased oxygen in the atmosphere.
A controversial new theory has proposed that the clashing of supercontinents billions of years ago may have been responsible for the oxygen-rich atmosphere that sustains much of the life on Earth today.
According to a report in Nature News, the theory has been put forward by geochemists at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.
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The Earth had almost negligible oxygen levels until the 'great oxidation event' roughly 2.5 billion years ago. Today, oxygen makes up about 21% of the atmosphere.
Rising oxygen levels have been linked to the evolution of bilaterally symmetric animals, animals' move onto land, and increased body size.
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Most theories propose that the oxygen was being consumed, either by reacting with volcanic gases or by being trapped in the Earth through reactions with iron or sulphur.
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Now, ANU's Charlotte Allen and Ian Campbell propose instead that the trigger for oxygenation was the collision of tectonic plates.
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As those mountains eroded, it washed nutrient-rich sediments into the sea, which helped the oxygen-producing cyanobacteria to grow in vast numbers.
At the same time, organic carbon fell to the ocean floor and was buried there. The extra oxygen, lacking the carbon it would normally react with to create carbon dioxide, remained in the atmosphere.
The scientists, whose main focus is not atmospheric sciences, had originally set out to understand continental growth by dating about 7,000 zircon crystals.
Sifting through the scientific literature, they realised that more zircon crystals had been formed when several land masses were squashed together into a supercontinent; and that those time periods matched increases in atmospheric oxygen.
"We had no inkling there would be a correlation with atmospheric oxygenation," said Allen.
The researchers go on to link seven separate tectonic events to stepwise increases in atmospheric oxygen levels.
According to Ariel Anbar, a geochemist who studies the history of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere at Arizona State University in Tempe, "I think the possible connection between tectonic events and biogeochemistry and the rise of oxygen is intriguing, and will get people thinking."
Source-ANI
SPH
