2007-02-26 12:14:00 · 7 answers · asked by Slavic D 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Botany
Remember matter can neither be created nor destroyed, just change from one state to another. Plants don't actually produce oxygen. What they do is take the H2O, hydrogen bonded with oxygen in a liquid state and then release oxygen it got from the water as a gas into our atmosphere. The oxygen was already here. Just it was not a gas in our atmosphere.
As was stated cyanobacteria did indeed oxygenate our atmosphere before plants did, this is true.
2007-02-26 14:09:00 · answer #1 · answered by Professor Armitage 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That's a good question. The earliest of all living organisms were first synthesizing food through chemosynthesis and producing carbondioxide instead. But later these evolved to synthesize food using photosynthesis. These were cyanobacteris/blue-green algae. Only after them did free oxygen come into the atmosphere which resulted in the formation of ozone then made it suitable for all other organims.
2007-02-26 13:59:17 · answer #2 · answered by guyfromthesky 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I believe oxygen is produced in the stars like nearly all of the elements. Since our solar system is believed to have been formed from the remnants of a nearby supernova explosion, this where the oxygen on earth originated from. In earths atomosphere, before the rise of oxygen exhaling plants, I would think that the much of the oxygen game from sea since water is made up of oxygen.
2007-02-26 12:25:58 · answer #3 · answered by Mark A 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Before plants there was much less oxygen (note spelling) in our atmosphere. If all the plants where to disappear today, the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere would be greatly reduced. It was, in fact, a disaster for many species when plant started to produce it.
2007-02-26 12:20:32 · answer #4 · answered by jeffrcal 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
there is fixed amount of oxygen in our atmosphere, i.e, 21%, but the additional oxygen supplied by plants helps alot as otherwise we would have less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which is incidentially a greenhouse gas
2007-02-27 02:24:33 · answer #5 · answered by ana 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually, our atmosphere starting building up oxygen when the cyanobacteria started carrying on photosynthesis. We used to call these "blue-green algae" until they were reclassified with their fellow prokaryotes, the bacteria.
Algae, also pre-plant, followed cyanobacteria.
2007-02-26 12:58:45 · answer #6 · answered by ecolink 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
evaporating water!
2007-02-26 13:43:34 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋