The world expanded like an avalanche 717 million years ago; how did that happen?

Researchers simulated tectonic plate movements to solve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of planetary geology: Why did an extreme ice age, Earth’s largest, about 717 million years ago, turn our planet into a giant snowball floating in space for at least five million years?

According to the study’s lead author, Adriana Dutkiewicz, a sedimentologist at the University of Sydney, the global phenomenon may be due to “historically low emissions of volcanic carbon dioxide and weathering of a large pile of volcanic rock in what is now Canada”; a process that absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

In the background of these events is the Franklin Major Volcanic Province (LIP), which covers present-day Alaska, Greenland, and northern Canada. LIPS explosive coalescence of a broad band of igneous rock with hotspots in the Earth’s mantle, often associated with volcanic activity.

Ice age occurred due to lack of greenhouse gases on Earth

What is noteworthy about the Franklin LIP example is that the formation of the province coincides with the beginning of the period called the Sturtian glaciation. To understand why this period lasted an unimaginable 57 million years, the team used plate tectonics software GPlates. Illustration showing the evolution of continents and ocean basins shortly after the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia.

By plugging the model into a model that calculates CO2 gas released from underwater volcanoes where plates collide and new ocean crust is born, they realized that glaciation was linked to lower levels of volcanic CO2 emissions. Because it is a greenhouse gas, it can similarly contribute to global cooling at low concentrations in the atmosphere.

There are no multicellular animals or land plants on the planet, Dutkiewicz explains in a statement: “ “The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was almost entirely determined by the release of CO2 from volcanoes and the weathering processes of silicate rocks that consume CO2.”

The mystery of the world’s largest glaciation is being solved

According to co-author Dietmar Müller, also from the University of Sydney, although the climate of the time was determined by geology, the Sturtian ice age was the result of a double whammy: a “rearrangement of tectonic plates” that practically eliminated volcanic gas outflow. at the same time Canada’s LIP began to erode and consume more atmospheric CO2.

According to the geologist, The gas dropped below 200 parts per million; less than half of current levels, but enough to trigger glaciation on Earth..

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