The clashing of supercontinents billions of years ago may have been responsible for the oxygen-rich atmosphere that sustains much of the life on Earth today. That’s the controversial theory proposed in a paper published today in Nature Geosciences1. Geochemists at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra have suggested that as tectonic plates smashed into each other, reshaping supercontinents such as Pangaea, it set off a chain of events leading to increased oxygen in the atmosphere. (source: nature.com)
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