News Oceans Earth got first whiff of oxygen 3.2 billion years ago Rock record shows signs of oxidation 200 million years earlier than previously thought OXYGEN’S ORIGINS The first whiff of oxygen in Earth’s oceans came 200 million years earlier than previously known, new research finds. The oxygen-expelling organisms responsible were probably the forebears of modern cyanobacteria, shown. Nancy Nehring/iStockphoto Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterPinterestPocketRedditPrint By Thomas Sumner September 8, 2015 at 8:00 am The first oxygen-producing life-forms appeared hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously known, new evidence suggests.