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| Down Under |
| Researchers claim 'Supermountain range' the source of life |
| 2006-10-23 |
| AUSTRALIAN researchers believe they have discovered evidence that an 8000km-long 'supermountain range' as high as the Himalayas was the source of life on Earth. The range spanned the prehistoric supercontinent Gondwana, which later fragmented to form present-day Australia, Africa, Antarctica, New Zealand, South America and Arabia said Rick Squire of Melbourne's Monash University School of Geosciences. Dr Squire was studying the formation of a gold deposit at the Stawell mine in western Victoria with three other researchers when the group made the discovery. The four, including the University of Melbourne's Professor Chris Wilson and Australian National University researchers Ian Campbell and Charlotte Allen, were examining what qualities in the region's sandstone helped create the gold deposit. The researchers were dating zircon, a mineral in the stone, using a spectrometer. "We were initially disappointed because we were looking for something that was unique, but the sands were the same as other sands in other parts of Victoria," Dr Squire said. "We wanted to know why they were all the same so we did some reading and looked at some other sands and found that they were all the same age and all had a link." Zircon traces very similar in age and composition were found in sandstone on all continents that formed Gondwana, he said. Dr Squire said the researchers believed the likely source was a now-eroded supermountain range that formed when the eastern and western halves of Gondwana collided 500 million to 650 million years ago. The erosion of the mountain range deposited huge amounts of elements including iron, phosphorus, magnesium and calcium into the ocean. "The supermountain range formed near the equator at a time when there was no vegetation and there was really high rainfall and really high erosion," Dr Squire said. "Huge rivers drained all of this sand and mud into the oceans and deposited it on the edges of Gondwana. "This changed the ocean chemistry. "We are arguing this provided a big flux in nutrients that helped trigger big algal blooms that were the source of food that led to this radical growth in animal life." The findings have been published in the latest issue of the geology journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. |
| Posted by:Oztralian |
| #5 Bah!!! This is nothing compared to THOSE mountains!!! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-23 11:56 |
| #4 I always liked the Sherwin-Williams theory of continental drift |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2006-10-23 11:50 |
| #3 eastern and western halves of Gondwana collided And then they colided more and more until there was a big heap in the middle of the ocean... Wait... Wheee... All of the sudden the continets flew apart... Yes, it all makes sense now. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2006-10-23 11:21 |
| #2 I think we all know the real source of this titantic mountain range. |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2006-10-23 09:21 |
| #1 Hyperborea Thule? |
| Posted by: Admiral Allan Ackbar 2006-10-23 05:56 |