Did Earth Once Freeze Completely? New Evidence Found in Colorado Rocks

New analysis on distinctive sandstone formations within the Colorado Rocky Mountains could affirm that Earth skilled a large, planet-wide freeze often called “Snowball Earth.” About 700 million years in the past, Earth’s floor was encased in ice, creating an excessive local weather the place adolescence not solely survived however later advanced into complicated multicellular organisms.

For many years, the Snowball Earth speculation was supported primarily by coastal sedimentary rocks and local weather fashions. However, stable proof of ice sheets reaching the planet’s equatorial inside has remained elusive—till now. The latest research, printed within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies uncommon sandstone deposits known as Tava, discovered inside the granite formations of Colorado’s Pikes Peak. These sandstones seemingly fashioned below the stress of ice sheets, supporting the Snowball Earth idea with new geological proof.

Tava sandstone formation linked to historical ice pressures

Pikes Peak, a sacred website recognized to the Ute folks as Tavá Kaa-vi, is the supply of those Tava sandstone formations. Researchers found that the sandstones fashioned when sandy, water-saturated sediment was pressured into weakened rock by the immense weight of ice sheets. The research’s lead authors, Christine Siddoway and Rebecca Flowers, used superior radiometric relationship to find out that Tava sandstones developed round 690 to 660 million years in the past, aligning with the Cryogenian Period.

Using iron minerals discovered with the sandstone, Siddoway’s crew employed uranium-lead relationship to verify the Tava sandstone’s origins inside the Snowball Earth timeframe. The crew means that the ice sheets masking the equatorial Laurentia landmass, now a part of North America, created the pressures essential to kind these sandstone injectites.

Implications for understanding Earth’s climatic previous

This discovery strengthens the Snowball Earth speculation whereas additionally shedding mild on different geological phenomena, together with “unconformities” the place erosion has eliminated giant parts of Earth’s rock document. The findings at Pikes Peak point out that related unconformities could predate Snowball Earth, suggesting complicated erosion processes over hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists hope these insights will result in a deeper understanding of Earth’s local weather historical past and the processes that formed our liveable planet.