[RosanaAnaDana]

Really, really weird that the article doesn't even mention nitrogen, nostoc or heterocysts. I'm not sure you can have a conversation about the great oxygen holocaust without at least bringing up one of the primary reasons we know "something" about the conditions before the event, specifically that there are still bacteria around today who are putting out a pretty significant amount of effort to create anoxygenic environments specifically for nitrogen fixation; that nitrogen as a terminal electron receptor basically 'cant happen' in the presence of oxygen.

Its just weird to not discuss the evolutionary lineage that still uses pre-oxygenation event hardware (with some extreme bug fixes to deal with oxygen) to fix nitrogen.

[angiosperm]

Are these the bacteria that literally all other life on earth depend on to split N2 so they will be able make protein and reproduce?

[emjoes1]

What is the great oxygen holocaust? Odd choice of words.

[angiosperm]

99%+ of species were driven to extinction, first from their environments becoming bathed in oxygen they were powerless to resist, and then from the whole planet freezing over for an eon (except maybe some equatorial refugia). Volcanism eventually restored enough CO2, with the oxygenators frozen, so the ice could melt.

[falserum]

Informative