People always go on about the KT extinction event and the utterly catastrophic impact the asteroid had. However, my "favourite" (horrible as it is to call it that) (not-exactly) extinction event has instead become the Great Oxygenation Event, where 80% of life on earth flat out died and the planet became terraformed (heh) because some stupid-ass bacterium learned to eat the sun really, REALLY well.
Not just the inhabitants, but the planet itself, the very composition of its atmosphere and just about all the rules changed as these bacteria slowly poisoned the air and rusted the oceans. It's... frankly mind-blowing the scale of it all.
And today it's just considered a super ordinary, rather unremarkable thing that there is a stupid amount of oxygen floating around freely in our atmosphere.
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