January 24, 2004 | David F. Coppedge

Early Oxygen Causes Evolutionary Gasps

The rise of oxygen in the primitive Earth’s atmosphere has been pushed back 100 million more years, according to Sid Perkins writing for the Jan. 24 issue of Science News.  This is based on studies of sediments in South Africa.  Though estimated at just a millionth of today’s concentrations, the finding comes as a surprise.  “Previous research suggested that the atmosphere before 2.45 billion years ago was almost devoid of oxygen,” according to Heinrich Holland, a Harvard geochemist whose report was presented in the Jan. 8 issue of Nature.1  Perkins says it is impossible to know if that was the first indication oxygen was present.


1Bekker and Holland, “Dating the rise of atmospheric oxygen,” Nature 427(Jan. 8):117-120.

Oxygen is good for people but bad for the origin of life.  Even a tiny amount is poison to an evolving cell.  The more secular geologists push oxygen back into their timeline, the more it will strain the credibility of the claim life arose from chemicals on a primitive earth.
    The point is not that they can know such things as 2.45 billion year dates or concentrations of ancient oxygen by examining present-day minerals.  The point is that their story is inconsistent with reality no matter which way you slice it.  Presuming there was no oxygen at all in an atmosphere of water vapor is unreasonable.  Presuming the earth is that old is unproveable.  Presuming that chemicals could evolve into a living machine is asinine.  Is there a thread of rationality left in this story?  The Midianites are destroying themselves as the Gideonites look on.

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Categories: Origin of Life

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