Episode 75 - The Great Oxidation Event

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Natural Sciences, Education, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2019

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Time for another extinction! This time, we’re discussing what might be the most ancient, most mysterious, and most catastrophic mass extinction event of all time. The Great Oxidation Event marks the turning point that set our atmosphere on course to its current oxygen-rich state and made the Earth hospitable for life as we know it … at the expense of all the life that came before. In the news: the largest ape, early pollinators, early birds, and early snakes. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:30 Main discussion, Part 1: 00:36:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:09:30 Patron Question: 01:33:00 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ We're doing another End of the Year Q&A! Submit your question here: https://forms.gle/E398RmMhGvaYHpz6A The Common Descent Store is open! Get merch! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:18.5	Hello, Will. Hello, David. Hello, listeners. Welcome to episode 75 of the Common Descent
0:26.4	Podcast. 75. Yeah, hey, there's a five. Oh, hey, those are significant. All of our listeners know
0:32.5	what that means. We have this longstanding tradition now of when episodes end in a five, we talk about extinction.
0:39.1	And fortunately, we have had a bunch of really great suggestions for extinction episodes.
0:44.6	This one is maybe the weirdest one.
0:47.2	Today we are talking about the Great Oxidation Event.
0:51.3	Which sounds like it should be a good thing.
0:52.8	You know, so the Great Ox event is a very strange choice for an extinction episode,
1:01.4	but I stand by it because it's going to be fun.
1:04.1	This is a time period in the early Earth, well, early from our standards,
1:09.2	when oxygen levels first become significantly high on the planet.
1:15.2	Yeah, because oxygen wasn't always a major player in the atmosphere.
1:18.1	Sure was not. This was great for some forms of life.
1:22.2	And that's one of those weird things is, you know, like it sounds like it should be a good thing, but what is good for one
1:28.3	group is can often be poisonous for another.
1:31.3	And the reason that it's such an interesting, it's a great event to do an episode about, and we put in an extinction because it technically fits, but this is the first time in our extinction tradition that we are talking about an extinction event that is sort of hypothetical.
1:49.0	Yeah, like there absolutely should be an extinction.
1:52.9	Yes, but we don't have a fossil record really from that time.
1:58.7	Because of all those squishy things.
2:00.0	So whereas most of our extinction episodes, it's here's what disappears from the fossil record
2:06.0	and thus is extinct.
	...

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