<P> The Great Oxygenation Event triggered an explosive growth in the diversity of minerals, with many elements occurring in one or more oxidized forms near the Earth's surface . It is estimated that the GOE was directly responsible for more than 2,500 of the total of about 4,500 minerals found on Earth today . Most of these new minerals were formed as hydrated and oxidized forms due to dynamic mantle and crust processes . </P> <P> Million years ago . Age of Earth = 4,560 </P> <P> It has been proposed that a local rise in oxygen levels due to cyanobacterial photosynthesis in ancient microenvironments was highly toxic to the surrounding biota, and that this selective pressure drove the evolutionary transformation of an archaeal lineage into the first eukaryotes . Oxidative stress involving production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) might have acted in synergy with other environmental stresses (such as ultraviolet radiation and / or desiccation) to drive selection in an early archaeal lineage towards eukaryosis . This archaeal ancestor may already have had DNA repair mechanisms based on DNA pairing and recombination and possibly some kind of cell fusion mechanism . The detrimental effects of internal ROS (produced by endosymbiont proto - mitochondria) on the archaeal genome could have promoted the evolution of meiotic sex from these humble beginnings . Selective pressure for efficient DNA repair of oxidative DNA damages may have driven the evolution of eukaryotic sex involving such features as cell - cell fusions, cytoskeleton - mediated chromosome movements and emergence of the nuclear membrane . Thus the evolution of eukaryotic sex and eukaryogenesis were likely inseparable processes that evolved in large part to facilitate DNA repair . Constant pressure of endogenous ROS has been proposed to explain the ubiquitous maintenance of meiotic sex in eukaryotes . </P>

How did the rise in free oxygen change the evolution of certain species on earth