text: As far as we can tell, oxygenic photosynthesis only evolved once (in prokaryotic cyanobacteria), and all photosynthetic eukaryotes (including all plants and algae) have acquired this ability from them. In other words, all the oxygen that makes the atmosphere breathable for aerobic organisms originally comes from cyanobacteria or their later descendants.
  Cyanobacteria remained the principal primary producers throughout the Proterozoic Eon (2500–543 Ma), in part because the redox structure of the oceans favored photoautotrophs capable of nitrogen fixation. However, their population is argued to have varied considerably across this eon. Green algae joined blue-greens as major primary producers on continental shelves near the end of the Proterozoic, but only with the Mesozoic (251–65 Ma) radiations of dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, and diatoms did primary production in marine shelf waters take modern form. Cyanobacteria remain critical to marine ecosystems as primary producers in oceanic gyres, as agents of biological nitrogen fixation, and, in modified form, as the plastids of marine eukaryotic algae.