24th June 2020
A complex question – but one which researchers at the University of St Andrews are helping to answer - to find out when our planet became habitable to complex life.
The research, led by the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in June, addresses this by defining which came first, the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) or the Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth period.
The relative timing of these global events is pivotal to understanding changes in atmospheric composition and climate conditions, and how the first signs of life on Earth began.
