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The Great Oxidation Event (GOE, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust,^[1] Oxygen Revolution) was when Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean was oxidized around 2.4 billion years ago (2.4 Ga) to 2.1-2.0 Ga during the Paleoproterozoic era.^[2] Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggests that biologically induced molecular oxygen (dioxygen, O₂) started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere and changed Earth's atmosphere from a reducing atmosphere to an oxidized atmosphere.^[3] The causes of the event remain unclear.^[4]

The rate of change of oxygen can be calculates by the difference between source and sinks. ^[5]A chronology of the Great Oxidation Event suggests that free oxygen was first produced by prokaryotic and then later eukaryotic organisms in the ocean that carried out photosynthesis more efficiently, producing oxygen as a waste product.^[6][7] In one interpretation, the first oxygen-producing cyanobacteria could have arose before the GOE, ^[6][8] from 2.7 Ga to 2.4 Ga and perhaps even earlier. ^[9][10][11]However, the oxygen photosynthesis was not the only source that created oxygen accumulation. The burial of organic carbon, sulfur and iron metals was the primary factor of oxygen accumulation. For example, when organic carbon is buried, the oxygen is left in the atmosphere without being oxidized. In total, the burial of organic carbon, pyrite and created a total of 15.8± 3.3 Tmol of O₂ per year.

The rate of change of oxygen can be calculates by the difference between source and sinks. The oxygen sinks include reducing gases and minerals from volcanoes, metamorphism and weathering. ^[5] However, oxygen accumulation did not happen after the origin of photosynthesis, because the net flux of oxygen went towards the sinks. The GOE started after these oxygen sinks were filled to capacity.^[12] For the weathering mechanisms, 12.0 ± 3.3 Tmol of O₂ per year went to the sinks composed of reducing minerals and gases from volcanoes, metamorphism, percolating seawater and heat vents from the seafloor. ^[5] On the other hand, 5.7 ± 1.2 Tmol of O₂ per year was oxidizes through reducing gases in the atmosphere through photochemical reaction. ^[5]

Dissolved iron in oceans is an example of the O₂ sinks. Free oxygen produced during this time was chemically captured by dissolved iron, converting iron ${\displaystyle {\ce {Fe}}}$ and ${\displaystyle {\ce {Fe^2+}}}$to magnetite (${\displaystyle {\ce {Fe^2+Fe2^3+O4}}}$) that is insoluble in water, and sank to the bottom of the shallow seas to create banded iron formations such as the ones found in Minnesota and Pilbara, Western Australia. The GOE started after these oxygen sinks were filled to capacity.^[12] It took 50 million years to deplete the oxygen sinks.^[13] The rate of photosynthesis also affects the rate of oxygen accumulation since the rate of photosynthesis in the modern days are much greater than the production rate the Precambrian without land plants, modern atmospheric O₂ levels could be produced in 2 million years.^[14]

Eventually, oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere, with two major consequences.

First, it oxidized atmospheric methane (a strong greenhouse gas) to carbon dioxide (a weaker one) and water. This weakened the greenhouse effect of the Earth's atmosphere, causing planetary cooling, and triggered a snowball Earth episode known as the Huronian glaciation, which started around 2.4 Ga and lasted 300-400 million years.^[15][16]

Second, the increased oxygen concentrations provided a new opportunity for biological diversification, as well as tremendous changes in the nature of chemical interactions between rocks, sand, clay, and other geological substrates and the Earth's air, oceans, and other surface waters. Despite the natural recycling of organic matter, life had remained energetically limited until the widespread availability of oxygen. This breakthrough in metabolic evolution greatly increased the free energy available to living organisms, with global environmental impacts. For example, mitochondria evolved after the GOE, giving organisms the energy to exploit new, more complex morphology interacting in increasingly complex ecosystems.^[17]

Paleosols, detrital grains, and redbeds are evidence of low-level oxygen. The paleosols older than 2.4 Ga have low iron concentrations that suggests anoxic weathering.^[18] Detrital grains older than 2.4 Ga also have material that only exists under low oxygen conditions. ^[19] Redbeds are red-colored sandstones that are coated with hematite, which indicates that there was enough oxygen to oxidize iron.^[20]

The concentration of Ferruginous and euxinic states in iron mass can also provide clues of the oxygen level in the atmosphere. ^[21] When the environment is anoxic, the ratio of Ferruginous and euxinic out of the total iron mass is lower than the ratio in an anoxic environment such as the deep ocean. ^[22] One of the hypotheses suggests that microbes in the ocean already oxygenated the shallow waters before the GOE event around 2.6- 2.5 Ga.^[5][22] The high concentration Ferruginous and euxinic states of sediments in the deep ocean showed consistency with the evidence from banded iron formations.^[5]

The are two types of isotopes considered: mass-dependent fractionation (MDF) isotopes and mass-independent fractionation isotopes (MIF). For the MDF evidence, we consider the isotopes evidence in marine sediments of the accumulation of oxygen such as carbon, sulfur, nitrogen, transitional metals (Chromium, Molybdenum and Iron) and non metal elements (Selenium). ^[5]

For example, a spike in chromium contained in ancient rock deposits formed underwater shows accumulated chromium washed off from the continental shelves. Since chromium is not easily dissolved, its release from rocks requires the presence of a powerful acid such as sulfuric acid (H2SO4) may have formed through bacterial reactions with pyrite.^[23] Mats of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria can produce a thin layer, one or two millimeters thick of oxygenated water in an otherwise anoxic environment even under thick ice. Thus, before oxygen started accumulating in the atmosphere, these organisms would already have adapted to oxygen.^[24]Eventually, the evolution of aerobic organisms that consumed oxygen established an equilibrium in the availability of oxygen. Free oxygen has been an important constituent of the atmosphere ever since.^[25]

The critical evidence of GOE was the MIF sulfur isotopes that only existed in anoxic atmosphere disappeared from sediment rocks after 2.4-2.3 Ga. ^[26] MIF only existed in an anoxic atmosphere since oxygen would have prevented the photolysis of sulfur dioxide. However, the change from MIF to MDF of sulfur isotopes may have been caused by an increase in glacial weathering or homogenization of marine sulfur pool as a result of an increased thermal gradient during the Huronian glaciation period (which was not caused by oxygenation in this interpretation ).^[27][28] The process of MIF sedimentation is currently uncertain.

Stromatolites is one of the fossil evidence of oxygen, field geology and isotopes suggest that the oxygen came from photosynthesis. Biomarkers such as 2α-methylhopanes from cyanobacteria were also found Pilbara, Western Australia. However, the data was contaminated and results were inconclusive.^[29]

Some elements in marine sediments are sensitive to different levels of oxygen in the environment such as transition metals molybdenum and rhenium. ^[30] Non-metal elements such as selenium and iodine are also indicators of oxygen levels.^[31]

There may have been a gap of up to 900 million years between the start of photosynthetic oxygen production and the geologically rapid increase in atmospheric oxygen about 2.5–2.4 billion years ago. Several hypotheses propose to explain this time lag.

Some people suggest that GOE is caused by the increase of the source of oxygen. One hypothesis argues that GOE was the immediate result of photosynthesis, although the majority of scientists suggest that a long-term increase of oxygen is more likely the case. ^[32] Several model results show possibilities of long term increase of carbon burial,^[33] but the conclusions are indecisive. ^[34]

In contrast to the Increasing flux hypothesis, there are also several hypotheses trying to use decrease of sinks to explain GOE. One theory suggests that composition of the volatiles from volcanic gases were more oxidized. ^[35] Another theory suggests that the decrease of metamorphic gases and serpentinization is the main key of GOE. Hydrogen and methane released from metamorphic processes will escape Earth's atmosphere and leave the crust oxidized. ^[36]

The oxygen increase had to await tectonically driven changes in the Earth, including the appearance of shelf seas, where reduced organic carbon could reach the sediments and be buried.^[37] The newly produced oxygen was first consumed in various chemical reactions in the oceans, primarily with iron. Evidence is found in older rocks that contain massive banded iron formations apparently laid down as this iron and oxygen first combined; most present-day iron ore lies in these deposits. It was assumed oxygen released from cyanobacteria resulted in the chemical reactions that created rust, but it appears the iron formations was caused by anoxygenic phototrophic iron-oxidizing bacteria, which does not require oxygen.^[38] Evidence suggests oxygen levels spiked each time smaller land masses collided to form a super-continent. Tectonic pressure thrust up mountain chains, which eroded to release nutrients into the ocean to feed photosynthetic cyanobacteria.^[39]

Early chemosynthetic organisms likely produced methane, an important trap for molecular oxygen, since methane readily oxidizes to carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water in the presence of UV radiation. Modern methanogens require nickel as an enzyme cofactor. As the Earth's crust cooled and the supply of volcanic nickel dwindled, oxygen-producing algae began to out-perform methane producers, and the oxygen percentage of the atmosphere steadily increased.^[40] From 2.7 to 2.4 billion years ago, the rate of deposition of nickel declined steadily from a level 400 times today's.^[41]

Another hypothesis posits a model of the atmosphere that exhibits bistability: two steady states of oxygen concentration. The state of stable low oxygen concentration (0.02%) experiences a high rate of methane oxidation. If some event raises oxygen levels beyond a moderate threshold, the formation of an ozone layer shields UV rays and decreases methane oxidation, raising oxygen further to a stable state of 21% or more. The Great Oxidation Event can then be understood as a transition from the lower to the upper steady states.^[42]

The Great Oxidation Event triggered an explosive growth in the diversity of minerals, with many elements occurring in one or more oxidized forms near the Earth's surface.^[43] It is estimated that the GOE was directly responsible for more than 2,500 of the total of about 4,500 minerals found on Earth today. Most of these new minerals were formed as hydrated and oxidized forms due to dynamic mantle and crust processes.^[44]

It has been proposed that a local rise in oxygen levels due to cyanobacterial photosynthesis in ancient microenvironments was highly toxic to the surrounding biota, and that this selective pressure drove the evolutionary transformation of an archaeal lineage into the first eukaryotes.^[45] Oxidative stress involving production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) might have acted in synergy with other environmental stresses (such as ultraviolet radiation and/or desiccation) to drive selection in an early archaeal lineage towards eukaryosis. This archaeal ancestor may already have had DNA repair mechanisms based on DNA pairing and recombination and possibly some kind of cell fusion mechanism.^[46][47] The detrimental effects of internal ROS (produced by endosymbiont proto-mitochondria) on the archaeal genome could have promoted the evolution of meiotic sex from these humble beginnings.^[46] Selective pressure for efficient DNA repair of oxidative DNA damages may have driven the evolution of eukaryotic sex involving such features as cell-cell fusions, cytoskeleton-mediated chromosome movements and emergence of the nuclear membrane.^[45] Thus the evolution of eukaryotic sex and eukaryogenesis were likely inseparable processes that evolved in large part to facilitate DNA repair.^[45][48] Constant pressure of endogenous ROS has been proposed to explain the ubiquitous maintenance of meiotic sex in eukaryotes.^[46]

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