| Popis: |
Stepping to an internal beat What caused the stepwise nature of the rise of molecular oxygen in Earth's atmosphere since it appeared in large quantities more than 2 billion years ago? Alcott et al. argue that a set of internal feedbacks involving the global phosphorus, carbon, and oxygen cycles, not individual external forces, could be responsible. Their model, which depends only on a gradual shift from reducing to oxidizing surface conditions over time, produces the same three-step pattern observed in the geological record. Science , this issue p. 1333 |
