Talk:Oxygen Catastrophe
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[edit] Too Technical, Missing Points?
I have an MSc in Physics and I think this page is way too technical, or unfortunately is written in a way that makes it much less interesting. (no offence to the hard working souls who created it). There is a huge middle section that goes off on a technical tangent about a time lag, and only near the end do we get to the explanation of what actually happened. It also seems that there is no mention at all of the Snowball Earth or how the snowball earth was eventually broken by more microbes that evolved to consume oxygen and create carbon dioxide. I found the DamnInteresting page on this event to be much more readable. It follows events chronologically and explains cause and effect in less technical language, as opposed to explaining one or two technical points in verbose detail. (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=673#more-673) 69.156.113.62 04:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
- The Snowball Earth was several billion years later, so I don't see that it's directly relevant to the Oxygen Catastrophe. But yes, this article could certainly do with some work, I'll try a rewrite if I have time. -- Danny Yee 08:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
- Also, the story on the DamnInteresting page is highly speculative. It goes into details that are certainly not known but simply guessed at. -- Danny Yee 08:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cyanobacteria
It would be useful to mention that the cause of the oxygen build up was the evolution of photosynthesising cyanobacteria from earlier photosynthesising sulphur bacteria. Photosynthesising sulphur bacteria use sunlight to split Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) molecules to produce sulphur, but cyanobacteria modified this process to split water (H20)molecules to produce oxygen. RV 4 March 2007
[edit] The oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans
This 2006 paper by Heinrich Holland lucidly reviews the subjects covered in this article. Professor Holland has kindly released figure 10 from his article under GFDL, for us to be able to use it in Wikipedia. These graphs illustrate the estimated evolution of atmospheric 
and the concentration of O2 in the shallow and deep oceans. Your assistance is now needed to adapt these graphs for use in Wikipedia, and update our articles with the information provided in the said paper. Regards, Lior 17:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
- The presentation of information D.I. End of Life here, deleted as "blogspam" [sic] might prove useful in improving the presentation in this Wikipedia article. --Wetman 17:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] When did ozone layer appear?
I thought that ozone layer appeared 500 millions years ago, when land became habitable (see Timeline of evolution). However this article relates its appearance with the much earlier Oxygen Catastrophe. Is it a real discrepancy, or are we talking about two different phases in its forming (i.e. for a stable 21% oxygen atmosphere one needs a much thinner ozone layer compared to the one needed for the land to become habitable)? Dan Gluck 09:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Capitalization
- The use of capitals in phrases like "Oxygen catastrophe" is unwarranted. --Wetman 18:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
- I'm proposing moving the page to the non-capitalized version (which redirects here). - tameeria (talk) 20:09, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
- There was only one oxgen catastrophe, so the expression may as well have capitals as a proper name of a specific event. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Image caption
What does 'A', 'B', and 'C' in the image caption refer to? There are no such labels in the image itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.228.39.223 (talk) 08:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
- The source paper of the diagram does not seem to suggest these time frames either (PDF available here). Strangely, the phases A, B,C are in addition to the stages 1-5, which are not linear in time. Linear time scale is indicated at the bottom of illustration. --83.76.186.14 (talk) 21:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Requested Move
Oxygen Catastrophe to oxygen catastrophe
- Oppose as it refers to a specific and not a generic event. 70.51.11.191 (talk) 00:48, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose, probably. The stuff I can find usully doesnt have a capital 'C', but if we dont write it like that people will think its about a general phenomenon, not a specific event. Callmederek (talk) 19:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose per comments above; specific event --Lox (t,c) 12:55, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
- Looks like the consensus is not to move the page, so I'm removing the move tag. - tameeria (talk) 16:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] What exactly was the "catastrophe" ?
I didn't find anything that actually explained what was so catastrophic to justify the title. What/how much actually happened ? Did existing lifeforms disappear, move underground, evolve ? Anaerobic organisms still exist. The availability of O2 seems more like a great opportunity than a catastrophe.Rcbutcher (talk) 02:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The rising oxygen levels wiped out a huge portion of Earth's inhabitants at the time. From their perspective it was a catastrophe. Cyanobacteria were essentially responsible for probably the largest extinction event in Earth's history. Eris Discord | Talk 02:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
