Geologists 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 ...

Major fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic oxygen during the Cambrian explosion may have been driven partly by the appearance of animals living at the seafloor, according to a study. In a ...

The Cambrian Explosion around 540 million years ago was a key event in the evolutionary history of life. But what exactly controlled the Cambrian Explosion has been a subject of scientific debate ...

Snelling, N. J., and McConnell, R. B. (in preparation). Rutten, M. G., The Geological Aspects of the Origin of Life on Earth (Elsevier, 1962).

For the development of animals, nothing -- with the exception of DNA -- may be more important than oxygen in the atmosphere. A study now links the rise in oxygen to a rapid increase in the burial of ...