Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists. The findings, published in the journal Geobiology, provide a rare window into the Great Oxidation Event, a time roughly 2.4 billion years ago when the oxygen concentration increased on Earth, fundamentally changing the planet’s surface. The event is thought to have triggered a mass extinction and opened the door for the development of more complex life, but little direct evidence had existed in the fossil record before the discovery of the new microfossils, the scientists said.
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2023
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