Brienna Geology Blog

"Odd New Theory Explains How Early Earth Got Its Oxygen" Cyanobacteria diagram from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteri a Oxygen production on Earth is theorized to have started about 2.5 billion years ago by oceanic cyanobacteria. These cyanobacteria produced oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. At around 2.3 billion years ago, an environmental change occurred, called the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE). At this point, the oxygen sinks on Earth became saturated, so oxygen produced by these cyanobacteria was free to go into the atmosphere. But what happened during that in between period? There are many theories that explain what happened in that time lag in between the beginning of oxygen production and the GOE. A more recent one is addressed in the news article I found. Convergent Boundary from https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/pltec/converge.html According to a news article on Live Science, a new study by Megan Duncan and Rajdeep Dasgupta at Rice...

From the places we go, to the food we eat, to the cars we drive and the products we use, geology surrounds us. It's easy to forget how much we depend on the geological processes of the Earth. Idaho in particular is a geological hotspot (figuratively speaking). Not too far from Rexburg, we have the Menan Buttes, two of the largest volcanic tuff cones. This an amazing piece of geologic history that we are welcomed to explore and observe exposed igneous rock, such as obsedian. We are also close to Yellowstone, City of Rocks, the Tetons, and many other cool places to explore geology. We are even fairly close to the Rockies where the continental crust can be up to 70 kilometers (45 miles) thick!   (Image from hike at Menan Butte) Along with that Rexburg is a large farming community. In order to have a successful crops, farmers have to analyze the soil content, determine what minerals go in their fertilizer. The minerals in the soil will depend on what kind of rock it originat...