SAMS Director Prof. Nicholas Owens said: “​In my opinion, this is one of the most exciting findings in ocean science in recent times.

“The discovery of oxygen production by a non-photosynthetic process requires us to rethink how the evolution of complex life on the planet might have originated. The conventional view is that oxygen was first produced around three billion years ago by ancient microbes called cyanobacteria and there was a gradual development of complex life thereafter.

"The potential that there was an alternative source requires us to have a radical rethink.”