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Ancient microbes may have used oxygen 500 million years before it filled Earth’s atmosphere
General • February 18, 2026
Life on Earth may have
learned to
breathe oxygen long
before oxygen
filled the skies. MIT
researchers traced a key oxygen-processing enzyme back hundreds of millions of years before the Great Oxidation Event. Early microbes living near oxygen-producing cyanobacteria may have quickly used up the gas as it formed, slowing its rise in the atmosphere. The results suggest life was adapting to oxygen far earlier — and far more creatively — than once thought.
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