news Earth Evidence status: Peer reviewed · Mineral-proxy study
Crystals hint Earth’s mantle was oxidizing before the Great Oxidation Event
Sulfur in apatite sealed in zircons up to 3.42 billion years old suggests the mantle under early arcs grew more oxidized long before oxygen stayed in the air.
What it does not show Oxygen was not measured directly; only 11 Archaean apatite inclusions, a calibration made for basaltic melts at 1,000 °C, and no samples between 2.1 billion and 425 million years ago

































