Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History
Abstract
The remarkable scientific story of how Earth became an oxygenated planet The air we breathe is twenty-one percent oxygen, an amount higher than on any other known world. While we may take our air for granted, Earth was not always an oxygenated planet. How did it become this way? Donald Canfield—one of the world's leading authorities on geochemistry, earth history, and the early oceans—covers this vast history, emphasizing its relationship to the evolution of life and the evolving chemistry of the Earth. Canfield guides readers through the various lines of scientific evidence, considers some of the wrong turns and dead ends along the way, and highlights the scientists and researchers who have made key discoveries in the field. Showing how Earth’s atmosphere developed over time, Oxygen takes readers on a remarkable journey through the history of the oxygenation of our planet.
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Geochemical proxies used to track ancient marine redox conditions may be revealing a biologically induced ventilation of the Neoproterozoic oceans, as opposed to an oxygenation of the atmosphere.
“In this way, the geochemical proxies used to track ancient marine redox conditions may be revealing a biologically induced ventilation of the Neoproterozoic oceans, as opposed to an oxygenation of the atmosphere (52).”
From Oxygen requirements of the earliest animals (2014) · cites this paper as [52]
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- Authors
- Canfield, D. E.
- Corresponding author
- Canfield, Donald E.
- ORCID
- Canfield, Donald E.
- Venue
- Princeton University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Published
- 2016-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W4301895261
- Cited by
- 75
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 18 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 2.60
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Princeton University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
- Keywords
- atmospheric oxygenation, Great Oxidation Event, early Earth atmosphere, evolution of life, early oceans
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