Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Briefing
  • Published:

Fluctuating evolution of seawater oxygen before the Great Oxidation Event

Atmospheric oxygen, supplied from the oceans, dramatically rose during the Great Oxidation Event. Our examination of the preceding evolution of seawater oxygenation revealed that the redox state in seawater oscillated between oxic and anoxic conditions before oceanic oxygenation again increased towards the dawn of the Great Oxidation Event.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Depositional models (not to scale) of sediments in the Hamersley Basin, which revealed the predominant processes in the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle under different redox conditions.

References

  1. Lyons, T. W., Reinhard, C. T. & Planavsky, N. J. The rise of oxygen in Earth's early ocean and atmosphere. Nature 506, 307–315 (2014). A review article that provides detailed evidence of the Great Oxidation Event.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Stüeken, E. E., Kipp, M. A., Koehler, M. C. & Buick, R. The evolution of Earth's biogeochemical nitrogen cycle. Earth Sci. Rev. 160, 220–239 (2016). A review article that presents the development of the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle throughout the Earth’s history.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Garvin, J., Buick, R., Anbar, A. D., Arnold, G. L. & Kaufman, A. J. Isotopic evidence for an aerobic nitrogen cycle in the latest Archean. Science 323, 1045–1048 (2009). This paper reports nitrogen isotopic data from shales that indicates an aerobic nitrogen cycle ~2.5 billion years ago.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Konhauser, K. O. et al. Iron formations: a global record of Neoarchaean to Palaeoproterozoic environmental history. Earth Sci. Rev. 172, 140–177 (2017). A review article that examines features and the distribution of iron formations, and the implications for the geochemical evolution of the oceans.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Li, L. et al. Recommendations for offline combustion-based nitrogen isotopic analysis of silicate minerals and rocks. Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 35, e9075 (2021). This paper reports the sealed-tube offline combustion technique for nitrogen isotopic measurements at the nanomolar level.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This is a summary of: Liang, X. et al. A seawater oxygen oscillation recorded by iron formations prior to the Great Oxidation Event. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01683-7 (2025).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fluctuating evolution of seawater oxygen before the Great Oxidation Event. Nat. Geosci. 18, 378–379 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01688-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01688-2

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing