Edinburgh, Scotland – Methane and carbon dioxide, not ammonia, were the greenhouse gases that compensated for our less energetic sun during the pre-oxygen Archean according to Penn State geoscientists ...

TOKYO — For nearly 90% of Earth’s history, our planet’s atmosphere contained almost no oxygen, making it completely ...

A rapid increase in oxygen levels about 2.5 billion years ago was linked to the evolution of photosynthetic organisms, but geological factors likely started this process. Earth’s early atmosphere was ...

In the absence of oxygen, methane may have been the most abundant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere, reaching a stable balance between a greenhouse and anti-greenhouse until oxygen producing single ...

A complex web of interactions between geological features including volcanoes, subsurface mantle, oceans and the atmosphere created the chemical mixture necessary for early life to oxygenate our ...