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Oxygenic photosynthesis uses water as an electron donor, which is oxidized to molecular oxygen (O 2) in the photosynthetic reaction center. The biochemical capacity for oxygenic photosynthesis evolved in a common ancestor of extant cyanobacteria. [11] The first appearance of free oxygen in the atmosphere is sometimes referred to as the oxygen ...
Bacteria develop primitive photosynthesis, which at first did not produce oxygen. [37] These organisms exploit a proton gradient to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a mechanism used by virtually all subsequent organisms. [38] [39] [40] 3000 Ma Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria using water as a reducing agent and producing oxygen as a waste ...
The evidence of plant evolution changes dramatically in the Ordovician with the first extensive appearance of embryophyte spores in the fossil record. The earliest terrestrial plants lived during the Middle Ordovician around 470 million years ago , based on their fossils found in the form of monads and spores, with resistant polymers in their ...
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
Land plants evolved from a group of freshwater green algae, perhaps as early as 850 mya, [3] but algae-like plants might have evolved as early as 1 billion years ago. [2] The closest living relatives of land plants are the charophytes, specifically Charales; if modern Charales are similar to the distant ancestors they share with land plants, this means that the land plants evolved from a ...
Earth's earliest atmosphere contained no free oxygen (O 2); the oxygen that animals breathe today, both in the air and dissolved in water, is the product of billions of years of photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to evolve the ability to photosynthesize, introducing a steady supply of oxygen into the environment. [130]
However, when porphyrin-based photoautotrophs evolved and started to photosynthesize, which included both the primitive purple bacteria using bacteriochlorophyll and cyanobacteria using chlorophyll, highly reactive dioxygen was released as a byproduct of water splitting and started to accumulate, first in the ocean and then in the atmosphere.
The first photosynthetic organisms probably evolved early in the evolutionary history of life using reducing agents such as hydrogen or hydrogen sulfide, rather than water, as sources of electrons. [4]