<P> The Great Oxygenation Event, the beginning of which is commonly known in scientific media as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation) was the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O) in Earth's atmosphere . Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggest that this major environmental change happened around 2.45 billion years ago (2.45 Ga), during the Siderian period, at the beginning of the Proterozoic eon . The causes of the event are not clear . The current geochemical and biomarker evidence for the development of oxygenic photosynthesis before the Great Oxidation Event has been mostly inconclusive . </P> <P> Oceanic cyanobacteria, which evolved into coordinated (but not multicellular or even colonial) macroscopic forms more than 2.3 billion years ago (approximately 200 million years before the GOE), are believed to have become the first microbes to produce oxygen by photosynthesis . Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter . The GOE started when these oxygen sinks became saturated, at which point oxygen produced by the cyanobacteria was free to escape into the atmosphere . </P> <P> The increased production of oxygen set Earth's original atmosphere off balance . Free oxygen is toxic to obligate anaerobic organisms, and the rising concentrations may have destroyed most such organisms at the time . Cyanobacteria were therefore responsible for one of the most significant mass extinctions in Earth's history . Besides marine cyanobacteria, there is also evidence of cyanobacteria on land . </P>

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