Rise of oxygen in early ocean due to wobbling Earth’s axis

Banded Iron Formation Australia, photo Frits Hilgen - Nearly 2.5 billion years ago, seas on our planet alternately contained more or less oxygen, due to the slow "wobble" of the rotating Earth. So writes an international team of scientists, some affiliated with Utrecht University and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). "The fact that the Earth eventually became an oxygen-rich planet with a pleasant climate may be partly due to the right astronomical influence at the right time," says Utrecht PhD candidate Margriet Lantink, first author of the article. The study was recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters . The sudden rise of oxygen. The "Earth System" worked substantially differently 2.5 billion years ago than it does today. The atmosphere was without oxygen and the oceans were rich in dissolved iron.