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Researchers find origin of 'breathable' atmosphere half a billion years ago
Date:10/29/2007

COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues have uncovered evidence of when Earth may have first supported an oxygen-rich atmosphere similar to the one we breathe today.

The study suggests that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world's oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into the atmosphere.

That oxygen may have helped trigger one of the largest growths of biodiversity in Earth's history.

Matthew Saltzman, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, reported the findings Sunday at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver .

For a decade, he and his team have been assembling evidence of climate change that occurred 500 million years ago, during the late Cambrian period. They measured the amounts of different chemicals in rock cores taken from around the world, to piece together a complex chain of events from the period.

Their latest measurements, taken in cores from the central United States and the Australian outback, revealed new evidence of a geologic event called the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion (SPICE).

Amounts of carbon and sulfur in the rocks suggest that the event dramatically cooled Earth's climate over two million years -- a very short time by geologic standards. Before the event, the Earth was a hothouse, with up to 20 times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere compared to the present day. Afterward, the planet had cooled and the carbon dioxide had been replaced with oxygen. The climate and atmospheric composition would have been similar to today.

If we could go back in time and walk around in the late Cambrian, this seems to be the first time we would have felt at home, Saltzman said. Of course, there was no life on land at the time, so it wouldn't have been all that comfortable.

The land was devoid
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Contact: Matthew Saltzman
Saltzman.11@osu.edu
614-292-0481
Ohio State University
Source:Eurekalert

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