{"id":223933,"date":"2025-10-24T06:12:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/how-a-nutrient-spark-turned-earth-into-an-oxygen-world"},"modified":"2025-10-24T06:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:12:17","slug":"how-a-nutrient-spark-turned-earth-into-an-oxygen-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/how-a-nutrient-spark-turned-earth-into-an-oxygen-world","title":{"rendered":"How a nutrient spark turned Earth into an oxygen world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-a-nutrient-spark-turned-earth-into-an-oxygen-world.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new study has revealed how phosphorus, a nutrient essential for photosynthesis, surged into ancient oceans and started Earth\u2019s first major rise in atmospheric oxygen more than 2 billion years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Matthew Dodd, from UWA\u2019s School of Earth and Oceans, is lead author of the study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-64194-4\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>. \u201cBy fueling blooms of photosynthetic microbes, these phosphorus pulses boosted <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/organic+carbon\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">organic carbon<\/a> burial and allowed oxygen to accumulate in the air, a turning point that ultimately made <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/complex+life\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">complex life<\/a> possible,\u201d Dr. Dodd said.<\/p>\n<p>The research combined a global archive of ancient carbonate rocks with modeling to simulate Earth\u2019s climate system and show that ocean phosphorus and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/atmospheric+oxygen\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">atmospheric oxygen<\/a> rose and fell together during the Great Oxidation Event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study has revealed how phosphorus, a nutrient essential for photosynthesis, surged into ancient oceans and started Earth\u2019s first major rise in atmospheric oxygen more than 2 billion years ago. Dr. Matthew Dodd, from UWA\u2019s School of Earth and Oceans, is lead author of the study published in Nature Communications. \u201cBy fueling blooms of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-climatology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}