Timeline of the Universe · event
The Great Oxidation
11.4 billion years — 2.4 billion years ago · Life on Earth
- Temperature (K)
- 3.3
- When
- 11.4 billion years — 2.4 billion years ago
- Redshift
- z ≈ 0.2
- Era
- Life on Earth
- Seconds After Big Bang
- 359654331210000000
What Happened
Free oxygen finally outruns everything that had been consuming it, and the atmosphere changes composition. Dissolved iron rusts out of the oceans and settles as the banded iron formations that most of the world's iron ore still comes from. Mineralogy changes with it: up to two-thirds of the five thousand mineral species now recognised are consequences of this, because oxygen gives elements like iron, copper and uranium a second oxidation state to form compounds in. Most of the minerals on this site exist because something respired.
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