Data from: The Archean origin of oxygenic photosynthesis and extant cyanobacterial lineages

The record of the co-evolution of oxygenic phototrophs and the environment
is preserved in three forms: genomes of modern organisms, diverse
geochemical signals of surface oxidation, and diagnostic Proterozoic
microfossils. When calibrated by fossils, genomic data form the basis of
molecular clock analyses. However, different interpretations of the
geochemical record, fossil calibrations, and evolutionary models produce a
wide range of age estimates that are often conflicting. Here, we show that
multiple interpretations of the cyanobacterial fossil record are
consistent with an Archean origin of crown-group Cyanobacteria. We further
show that incorporating relative dating information from horizontal gene
transfers greatly improves the precision of these age estimates, by both
providing a novel empirical criterion for selecting evolutionary models,
and increasing the stringency of sampling of posterior age estimates.
Independent of any geochemical evidence or hypotheses, these results
support oxygenic photosynthesis evolving at least several hundred million
years before the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), a rapid diversification of
major cyanobacterial lineages around the time of the GOE, and a
post-Cryogenian origin of extant marine picocyanobacterial diversity.