Photosynthesis More recent studies, reported in March 2018, also suggest that photosynthesis may have begun about 3.4 billion years ago. The main source of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere derives from oxygenic photosynthesis, and its first appearance is sometimes referred to as the oxygen catastrophe. Geological evidence suggests that oxygenic photosynthesis, such as that in cyanobacteria, became important during the Paleoproterozoic era around 2 billion years ago. Modern photosynthesis in plants and most photosynthetic prokaryotes is oxygenic. Oxygenic photosynthesis uses water as an electron donor, which is oxidized to molecular oxygen () in the photosynthetic reaction center. Several groups of animals
Primary producers photosynthesis. This is also a main way that primary producers take energy and produce/release it somewhere else. Plants, coral, bacteria, and algae do this. Bacteria is a more recent find in the process of photosynthesis with primary producers, as they were just discovered in the soil. During photosynthesis, primary producers take energy from the sun and produce it into energy, sugar, and oxygen. Primary producers also need energy to convert this same energy elsewhere, so they get it from nutrients. One type of nutrient is nitrogen. Without primary producers, organisms that are capable of producing energy on their own, the