Oxygen and the Evolution of Life

The book depicts the interleaved histories of life and oxygen. It is argued that life must have originated in an environment lacking free O2, and must have spent nearly a billion years as anaerobic bacteria. Then, in a stunning reversal, the evolution of photosynthesis introduced O2 into the environment.
For many organisms this was a disaster, but a few were able to evolve a much more efficient aerobic metabolism. Chapters deal with this evolution, with how life coped with oxygen, and how oxygen levels in the sea and atmosphere changed world chemistry forever. The authors describe the subsequent burst of evolution that led to today s world. They also consider the interplay of oxygen and CO2 levels, the consequences such as massive glaciations (snowball earth episodes), and how life dealt with them. They discuss global warming in this context, and finally, devote chapters to the roles of oxygen in medicine and in extraterrestrial exploration.