Geologists have discovered that oxygen producing life forms were already present on Earth around three billion years ago, which is 60 million years earlier than scientists previously thought.

This finding could rewrite evolution in history books.

Professors from the Presidency University in Kolkata, India, Joydip Mukhopadhyay and Gautam Ghosh along with other colleagues from Trinity College Dublin have found important evidence that confirms the chemical weathering of rocks led to soil formation occurring in the presence of oxygen.

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The authors confirmed these events took place around 3.02 billion years ago by using an auranium and lead isotope decay system to determine age based on geological time scales.

The ancient soil called paleosol derives from the Singhbhum Craton of Odisha, and was later named as "Keonjhar Paleosol" after the local town nearest to the site.

These early life forms were responsible for the addition of oxygen to the Earth's atmosphere. They laid the foundations for more complex life forms to proliferate and evolve.

According to Quentin Crowley, an assistant professor of isotope analysis at Trinity, the paleosol from India shows strong evidence the short-lived pulse that caused atmospheric oxygenation occurred considerably earlier than previously imagined

This occurrence billions of years ago was linked to the pattern of chemical weathering preserved in the paleosol compatible with the elevated atmospheric oxygen levels at that time.

Now, these substantial levels of oxygen could have only been produced by organisms that convert light energy and carbon dioxide into oxygen and water through photosynthesis, the mechanism  used by millions of different plant and bacteria species.

Crowley added that these rare examples from the rock record provide an idea of how rocks became weathered.

Ultimately, this research gives legitimacy to the notion of early, albeit short-lived atmospheric oxygenation.

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