Name: That Time Oxygen Almost Killed Everything
Uploaded: 2021-05-01T06:41:51.000Z
Duration: 5 min 52 s
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But what if I told you that there was a time when oxygen almost wiped out all life on Earth?

This is a story about how too much of a good thing can ruin everything for everybody.

Let's start 3 billion years ago, in the Archaean Eon, when the world was a place you'd

Back then, only 2 or 3% of the planet's surface was dry land.

The rest was covered in oceans, and … they were chock full of iron.

Because of all that iron, the oceans were probably not blue, but green -- and not because

of algae or other life, but because of rust.

You might think of rust as being brown, but green rust is a thing too!

It forms where there's a lack of oxygen, and back in the Archaean, oxygen was in short

So in the oceans, iron reacted with hydroxides and elements like sulfur and chlorine, covering

Above the green oceans, the atmosphere was mostly nitrogen -- as it is today -- along

with water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane.

Which was fine at the time, because microscopic life on Earth back then

Then about 2.3 billion years ago, some new kids showed up: Photosynthesizers.

These were bacteria, like the familiar blue-green cyanobacteria, or maybe even a kind of purple

Either way, they used the Sun's energy to convert CO2 and water into food -- releasing

Because when these little microbes started farting out oxygen, it changed the chemical

balance of the entire biosphere and, eventually, altered the face of our planet.

First, within about 200 million years, the oxygen from these new bacteria began reacting

This turned the oceans from a mellow green to a deep blood-red, as the seas began to

fill with iron oxide -- what we know as rust.

In fact, you can still see exactly when and where this happened, in strata known as Banded

Iron Formations, where huge swaths of rust settled out of oceans to form layers of red-brown

But beyond making water rusty, rising oxygen levels also shifted the balance of power among

Anaerobic microbes started to die off, as they were basically poisoned by the oxygen.

Meanwhile, the newer, more efficient, photosynthetic life began to spread.

And things changed even more when the oxygen in the ocean left the water … and entered

For the first time in Earth's history, large amounts of free oxygen started building up

And this is what scientists call a game-changer.

Because then, the climate started to change too.

As the photosynthetic bacteria kept spreading, they used up more and more of the carbon dioxide

And CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so as its levels went down, so did the temperature.

On top of that, oxygen also started reacting with the methane in the atmosphere, taking

With greenhouse gases at an all-time low, our planet started to see the first major

Temperatures dropped so drastically that it triggered a global glaciation, and our once

There may have been several pulses of these icy events, but by far the biggest of them

came to be known as the Huronian glaciation -- and it lasted for 300 million years.

Between these huge changes in the climate, and the radically different chemistry of the

planet, most life on Earth was pushed to the brink of extinction.

And this included the new guys -- the photosynthetic bacteria that were pumping out all the oxygen

Because, remember, they needed CO2 to survive.

So they were basically being suffocated by their own waste, which … when I say that

out loud, that's just gotta be a terrible way to go.

We don't know the full extent of the damage.

But the effects of this whole episode -- sometimes called the Oxygen Catastrophe -- is considered

one of the biggest extinction events in history.

But, you know how this movie ends, right?

By the time the Huronian glacial period ended, about 2.1 billion years ago, some

And the life-forms that survived inherited a better, more hospitable planet.

Oxygen was now abundant in the air and water, and a new thing also appeared in the atmosphere:

This coating of molecular oxygen helped block dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun,

Life became more complex and awesome and wonderful, and here we are.

It seems strange that bacteria could end up covering the whole world in ice.

And who'da thought oxygen would be responsible for wiping out … almost everybody?

But it just goes to show you that, sometimes, things gotta get worse before they get better.

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That Time Oxygen Almost Killed Everything

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