[TimGremalm]

"What they found may have implications for the origin of complex life.

The air, which has been preserved, undisturbed, in tiny pockets in the crystals for about 815 million years, appears to contain 10.9 per cent oxygen — just half the amount in the atmosphere today.

But it's about five times more than scientists expected for that time period, which is about 200 million years before the first known multicellular fossils."

[Udo]

> 200 million years before the first known multicellular fossils

This is a weird angle for the article to pursue. We have a monocellular fossil record that dates back 4.1 billion years, and I don't think anyone is proposing that we assumed up to this point oxygen levels took off because of multicellular life. A high oxygen level is probably one of many prerequisites for complex life, but that doesn't mean the genetic machinery was available as soon as it reached a certain concentration.

[omarchowdhury]

Wouldn't oxygen producing organisms such as plants and trees be a cause for oxygen levels taking off?

[duaneb]

If my college biology understanding of evolution is at all accurate, a functional oxygen pathway would provide an edge in the ecosystem (read: high rates of population growth) and may have, in fact, been a catalyst for multi-cellular growth.