• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

600-Million-Year-Old Time Capsule Of Ancient Ocean Found In The Himalayas

August 2, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Drops of water found inside mineral deposits are the remnants of an ocean that disappeared 600 million years ago. Remarkably, the best place to find the minerals in question is kilometers above sea level. The scientists who found them say the droplets may explain a much-debated event crucial to life as we know it.

The discovery of marine fossils on the tops of mountains presented a major point of confusion to Renaissance and Enlightenment scientists. Eventually, the need to explain these findings contributed to our current understanding of how colliding tectonic plates can force up mountains, bringing once low-lying lands – and the fossils deposited there – with them. Along with the fossils, sometimes marine sedimentary rocks bring subtler treasures.

Advertisement

Around 650 million years ago, the Earth experienced one or more glaciations that made recent ice ages look puny. During these so-called Snowball Earth events, most (if not all) of the planet was covered in ice, and debate continues about how life survived at all. Soon after, however, came the great explosion in complex life forms that led to the diversity we see today, made possible by a big increase in atmospheric oxygen known as the Second Great Oxygenation Event.

The causes of this event remain debated, including whether it was connected to the preceding deep freeze, or if their association in time is a coincidence. To answer those questions, we need samples of deposits laid down at the time. Sometimes that means going to improbable places to find them.

In Uttarakhand, India, Indian Institute of Science PhD student Prakash Chandra Arya helped find calcium and magnesium carbonate deposits with water droplets inside. Based on the ages of the rocks in which these were found, Arya and teammates matched the water to the Snowball Earth era. “We have found a time capsule for paleo oceans,” Arya said in a statement. 

The outcrop and magnefied images of magnetite with water droplets within it

The outcrop and magnified images of magnetite with water droplets within it

Ima ge Credit: Prakash Chandra Arya

“We don’t know much about past oceans,” Arya continued. “How different or similar were they compared to present-day oceans? Were they more acidic or basic, nutrient-rich or deficient, warm or cold, and what was their chemical and isotopic composition.”

Advertisement

Himalayan deposits may not answer these questions for the whole world, but the team found a long period of diminished calcium supply, which they attribute to greatly reduced river flows into the sedimentary basin where the rocks formed. Locking so much water in ice leaves little to form rivers, although whether that is the reason remains to be seen. Rocks that would normally be mostly calcium carbonate have increased magnesium concentrations as a result. These magnesium carbonate crystals have pore spaces within them that trap water and have preserved it ever since.

The team points out that photosynthetic cyanobacterial stromatolites thrive in the nutrient-poor conditions associated with such calcium deficiency. When nutrients are more abundant, faster-growing species outcompete the stromatolites. As oxygen producers, the stromatolites may account for the Second Great Oxygenation Event, and animals’ subsequent rise.

Oceanic crust is usually recycled every 200 million years or so by being pushed beneath another plate. That’s removed most of the rocks laid down in marine environments during the Snowball Earth era. Of those that have survived, most either lack water-trapping pores or become chemically altered too easily to preserve records over such a long time. Himalayan magnesite is an exception – one precious enough that Arya and colleagues hunted it over large tracts of the Lesser Himalayas.

The study is published open access in the journal PreCambrian Research

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tennis-Ruud beats Sultanov as Norway take lead in Davis Cup
  2. France says Mali must stick to election timetable
  3. Blinken meets Lopez Obrador to soothe thorny U.S.-Mexico relations
  4. What Would Happen To Humanity If All Microbes Suddenly Disappeared?

Source Link: 600-Million-Year-Old Time Capsule Of Ancient Ocean Found In The Himalayas

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Adidas Jabulani: The World Cup Football So Bad NASA Decided To Study It
  • Beluga Whales Shake Their Blob-Like Melons To Say Hello And Even Woo A Mate, But How?
  • Gravitational Wave Detected From Largest Black Hole Merger Yet: “It Presents A Real Challenge To Our Understanding Of Black Hole Formation”
  • At Over 100 Years Of Age, The World’s Oldest Elephant Passes Away In India
  • Ancient Human DNA Reveals Earliest Zoonotic Diseases Appeared 6,500 Years Ago
  • Boys Are Better At Math? That Could Be Because School Favors Them Over Girls
  • Looptail G: Most People Can’t Recognize A Letter You Have Seen Millions Of Times
  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version