LIFE ON THE EDGE: SURVIVING EARTH'S GREATEST EXTINCTIONS

The chemical revolution and climate crisis produced the largest mass extinction in Earth's history. Ninety-nine percent of all life disappeared. Yet something emerged from the hell. The oxygenic photosynthesis invented by tiny bacteria nearly 2.5 billion years ago did not disappear. It survived. It was passed on. Today it supports the base of almost all ecosystems on the planet. Without this catastrophe, animals would never have existed. Neither the plants. Nor us. The gas that almost destroyed everything is the same gas that penetrates your lungs with every breath. The land that emerged on the other side of this hell was a world forever changed. A world with oxygen. A world that for the first time met the conditions for something completely new: complex life.