Comment on C-c-changes
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 23 hours agoDidn’t the Proterozoic era happen a few billion years, and possibly a couple of snowball periods later than that? I thought the aneribic stuff happened pretty early and made Earth hotter than Venus, at the time.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Absolutely, but aerobic life is more able to harness efficient energy with the use of oxygen’s INSANE reactivity, and that change was only possible because the anaerobes turned 20+% of the atmosphere into the second-most electronegative element in the universe. Even plants, which produce oxygen gas during photosynthesis, use oxygen to power ATP synthesis. Oxygenation of the planet was absolutely requisite to allow the evolution of eukaryotic multicellular life.