Oxide minerals discovered in past geologic studies around the world had indicated that Earth’s atmosphere had at least small amounts of oxygen about 2.22 billion years ago. New studies of the sediments in northern South Africa’s Rooihoogte formation suggest that oxygen was present nearly 100 million years earlier than that.
The ratio of sulfur isotopes in sulfide minerals obtained at middle levels of the Rooihoogte formation–deposited in a shallow sea about 2.32
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