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Did low oxygen levels limit evolution for billions of years?

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Probably, but here is an interesting proposed timestamp:

When did the Earth reach oxygen levels sufficient to support animal life? Researchers from McGill University have discovered that a rise in oxygen levels occurred in step with the evolution and expansion of complex, eukaryotic ecosystems. Their findings represent the strongest evidence to date that extremely low oxygen levels exerted an important limitation on evolution for billions of years.

“Until now, there was a critical gap in our understanding of environmental drivers in early evolution. The early Earth was marked by low levels of oxygen, till surface oxygen levels rose to be sufficient for animal life. But projections for when this rise occurred varied by over a billion years — possibly even well before animals had evolved,” says Maxwell Lechte, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences under the supervision of Galen Halverson at McGill University.

McGill University, “What the rise of oxygen on early Earth tells us about life on other planets” at ScienceDaily (January 31, 2022)

The researchers studied iron-rich sedimentary rocks across the globe:

“These ironstones offer insights into the oxygen levels of shallow marine environments, where life was evolving. The ancient ironstone record indicates around less than 1 % of modern oxygen levels, which would have had an immense impact on ecological complexity,” says Changle Wang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who co-led the study with Lechte.

“These low oxygen conditions persisted until about 800 million years ago, right when we first start to see evidence of the rise of complex ecosystems in the rock record. So if complex eukaryotes were around before then, their habitats would have been restricted by low oxygen,” says Lechte.

McGill University, “What the rise of oxygen on early Earth tells us about life on other planets” at ScienceDaily (January 31, 2022)

Hmm. Last night, we were noting researchers who think they can identify chromosomes from 800 million years ago so that fits.

Sounds like a system unrolling…

The paper is closed access.

You may also wish to read: Researchers: Moons make planets habitable — but not all planets can have them. University of Rochester: The researchers found that rocky planets larger than six times the mass of Earth (6M) and icy planets larger than one Earth mass (1M) produce fully—rather than partially—vaporized disks, and these fully-vaporized disks are not capable of forming fractionally large moons.

Comments
More like 6k rounded years ago. If not high oxygen by mid-day 5, within a year or so of day 8 when Adam prayed fro rain and the vegetation began to breech the surface of the ground outside Eden (where already watered and lush). Adaptation and speciation within the various designed/created founding kinds, also began that year. reference Pearlman YeC for the alignment of scriptural testimony, science and ancient civ.Pearlman
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