Earth’s oxygen increased in gradual steps rather than big bursts

By using the Hüttenberg Formation, which formed between a billion and half a billion years ago, to study the time between Earth’s change from an anoxic environment (i.e. one lacking oxygen) to a more hospitable environment that heralded the animal kingdom, a team of researchers led by Dr. Huan Cui of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered a sustained, high level of carbon.