Rocks formed billions of years ago - found in Canada - revealed a previously unknown loss of living things, a loss that researchers say is more massive than the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, as Earth lost nearly three-quarters of the plant and animal species that It existed at the time.

The type of extinction varies this time; The victims are not only animals, but the list of victims included the microorganisms that formed the Earth's atmosphere and eventually paved the way for the existence of these large animals as well, according to the study prepared by researchers at Stanford University in the United States, the results of which were published on August 27 in the journal Proceedings Oof The National Academy of Science.

chThis ended with a huge decrease in life nearly 2.05 billion years ago, which the study attributed to the low levels of oxygen in the atmosphere.
"The fact that this geochemical evidence was found preserved in a state that could be studied was very surprising," Hodgges added in the press release. "But what was particularly unusual were the barite samples, which turned out to us to indicate a more complex history than we had thought."

The Oxygen Dilemma
Carbon interconnected the biosphere and levels of oxygen and dioxide in the atmosphere are.carbon
This relationship between the proliferation of life and oxygen in the atmosphere gave researchers new evidence to hypothesize an excess of oxygen. According to this hypothesis, the process of photosynthesis from ancient microorganisms and the process of weathering of rocks (breaking them up due to weather factors) created a large amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, then. Then this oxygen diminished later, as the oxygen-producing organisms depleted their food supply in the ocean, and. And then itoxygen became Oxygen is less abundant.
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The researchers' measurements of the oxygen, sulfur and barium isotopes in barite support this hypothesis.