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Creation Day 3: God creates the "chemical" breath of life
God's step-by-step 'timed process' in creating plants on Earth. For the first half of our planet's history, rocks reveal there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere. The first appearance of this life- giving gas was recently discovered in rocks along the western coastline of Australia radioactivity dated to be 3.5 billion years old.
Carefully observe the two pictures above. What is one thing that both pictures have in common? Now look the following pictures.
The main source of evidence for determining exactly when free oxygen first appeared in earth's atmosphere is rust . Rust , also known as oxidation , occurs when iron, free oxygen and water combine to form Fe203 - i ron o xide . Now look again at the pictures. • Picture A is a n old pickup truck rusting away in a n open field . • Picture B is a 3.5 billion year old banded iro n ( Fe2O3 ) rock formation located in Karijini National Park, Western Australia. This sedimentary rock is the first direct evidence pointing to intermittent low levels of free atmospheric oxygen and has also been found in Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United States . • Picture C shows cyanobacteria , the first created organisms capable of producing oxygen through photosynthesis. Scientists now believe that the banded iron rock layers were formed in sea water as the result of oxygen released (Picture D) by photosynthetic cyanobacteria .
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