Revisiting the greatness of Earth’s great oxidation
levels span orders of magnitude, begging the question, how great was Earth's Great Oxidation? The consequences of such disparate views on oxygenation levels are uncertainties regarding biospheric evolution, interpretations of the sedimentary record, and a limited ability to translate Earth's atmospheric history into insights for exoplanet research. In this review, we revisit the conditions immediately before, during, and after Earth's GOE to explore the key assumptions that underlie differing views on this critical interval of time. We then highlight new discoveries and outline extremely divergent but defendable interpretations of atmospheric oxygen trajectories across the GOE. Reducing such divergent scenarios should be a major target of research progress in the coming years.
Authors
- Michael A. Kipp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1844-3670)
- Mojtaba Fakhraee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2461-6374)
- Ichiko Sugiyama (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0276-2565)
- Jordon Hemingway (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8299-2255)
- Peter W. Crockford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0770-6482)
- S Wimmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7079-684X)
- Jihua Hao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3657-050X)
- Lyle L. Nelson
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Mansfield University (US)
- University of Connecticut (US)
- Duke University (US)
- Geological Institute (RU)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (US)
- Carleton University (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Communications Earth & Environment
- Published
- 2026-04-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03518-8
- Primary Topic
- Origins and Evolution of Life
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Canadian Institute for Advanced Research