Paleoproterozoic

Before the enormous increase in atmospheric oxygen, almost all existing lifeforms were anaerobic organisms, whose metabolism was based upon a form of cellular respiration that did not require oxygen. Free oxygen in large amounts is toxic to most anaerobic organisms. Consequently, the majority of the anaerobic lifeforms on Earth died when the atmospheric free-oxygen levels soared in an extinction event called the Great Oxidation Event. The only lifeforms that survived were either those resistant to the oxidizing and poisonous effects of oxygen, or those sequestered in oxygen-free environments. The sudden increase of atmospheric free oxygen and the ensuing extinction of the vulnerable lifeforms is widely considered to be the one of the first and most significant mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.[4]

Many crown node eukaryotes (from which the modern-day eukaryotic lineages would have arisen) have been approximately dated to around the time of the Paleoproterozoic era.[5][6] While there is some debate as to the exact time at which eukaryotes evolved,[7][8] current understanding places it somewhere in this era.[9][10]

During this era, the earliest global-scale continent-continent collision belts developed. The associated continent and mountain building events are represented by the 2.1–2.0 Ga Trans-Amazonian and Eburnean orogens in South America and West Africa; the ~2.0 Ga Limpopo Belt in southern Africa; the 1.9–1.8 Ga Trans-Hudson, Penokean, Taltson–Thelon, Wopmay, Ungava and Torngat orogens in North America, the 1.9–1.8 Ga Nagssugtoqidian Orogen in Greenland; the 1.9–1.8 Ga Kola–Karelia, Svecofennian, Volhyn-Central Russian, and Pachelma orogens in Baltica (Eastern Europe); the 1.9–1.8 Ga Akitkan Orogen in Siberia; the ~1.95 Ga Khondalite Belt and ~1.85 Ga Trans-North China Orogen in North China.

These continental collision belts are interpreted as having resulted from one or more 2.0–1.8 Ga global-scale collision events that then led to the assembly of a Proterozoic supercontinent named Columbia or Nuna.[11][12]

Felsic volcanism in what is now northern Sweden led to the formation of the Kiruna and Arvidsjaur porphyries.[13]

The lithospheric mantle of Patagonia's oldest blocks formed.[14]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Paleoproterozoic.

• Boring Billion
• Suavjärvi crater – 2.4 billion years old
• Francevillian biota - 2.1-billion-year-old macroscopic organisms
• Vredefort crater – 2.0 billion years old
• Sudbury Basin – 1.849 billion years old

• EssayWeb Paleoproterozoic Era
• First breath: Earth's billion-year struggle for oxygen New Scientist, #2746, 5 February 2010 by Nick Lane. Posits an earlier much longer snowball period, c2.4 - c2.0 Gya, triggered by the Great Oxygenation Event.
• The information on eukaryotic lineage diversification was gathered from a New York Times opinion blog by Olivia Judson. See the text here: .
• Paleoproterozoic (chronostratigraphy scale)