A new study has revealed details about the composition of Earth's atmosphere during the Archean eon, which lasted from around 4 billion years ago to 2.4 billion years ago. Astrobiologists study ...

Based on data gleaned from Archean outcrops, scientists generally agree that there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere right at Earth’s surface during the Archean. So a lot of oxygen much ...

More information: Yasuto Watanabe et al, Mechanistic links between intense volcanism and the transient oxygenation of the Archean atmosphere, Communications Earth & Environment (2025). DOI ...

Closer to the present, other rainstorms eroded the overlying tuff, exposing a fossil record of raindrops from the Archean eon, and may now have revealed the density of early Earth's atmosphere.

Their findings suggest that volcanic activity helped create the perfect conditions for the oxygen-rich atmosphere needed to sustain all life on our planet. Focusing on the late Archean eon (3 billion ...