Sydney, April 4 -- A research team constructed a detailed evolutionary timeline of bacteria, revealing that some microbes used oxygen long before photosynthesis evolved, according to the University of Queensland (UQ) on Friday.
The study focused on how microorganisms responded to the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) 2.33 billion years ago, a pivotal shift that transformed Earth's atmosphere to one that allows humans to breathe, said a UQ statement.
Dating bacterial evolution had been challenging due to incomplete fossil evidence, said Professor Phil Hugenholtz from UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.
Most microbes left no direct fossil record, but ancient rocks contained chemical traces of bacterial activity, Hugenholtz said...