Looking for a conection between the length of the Earth's days and the development of an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
[sciencythoughts.blogspot.com]
A day on Earth (i.e. the period between one sunrise and the next) lasts for 24 hours, but four billion years ago it may have been as short as six hours. Thus, the length of the day, and the length of time for which any given part of the Earth's surface is exposed to sunlight during each cycle has increased threefold over the history of the planet. The rate of photosynthesis (i.e. the rate at which oxygen is produced by Plants, Algae, and Cyanobacteria exposed to sunlight) is determined by instantaneous photon flux, and should not be affected by the length of the day, as long as the total amount of sunlight over any given period remains the same. However, the net rate of oxygen is influenced by both how much oxygen is produced, and the rate at which organic material (and the bio-available carbon it contains) is buried, and this burial rate is potentially influenced by the length of the day. Thus the net production of oxygen by benthic ecosystems will be influenced by changes in the length of the day, due to changes in the availability of metabolites, the import, export and accumulation of which can be sensitive to daylength.
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