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https://theconversation.com/strange-rock-formations-beneath-the-pacific-ocean-could-change-our-understanding-of-the-early-earth-223718>
"Our world may seem fragile, but Earth has been around for a very long time. If
we ventured far back into the past, would we reach a time when it looked
fundamentally different?
The answer lies in some of the earliest extensive relics of Earth’s surface,
found in a remote corner of southern Africa’s highveld – a region known to
geologists as the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
The geological formations in this region have proved difficult to decipher,
despite many attempts. But our new research has shown the key to cracking this
code lies in geologically young rocks laid down on the seafloor of the Pacific
Ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
This has opened up a new perspective on what our planet looked like when it was
still young.
Our work began with a new, detailed geological map (by Cornel de Ronde) of part
of the Barberton Greenstone Belt. This has revealed a fragment of the ancient
deep seafloor, created some 3.3 billion years ago.
There was, however, something very strange about this seafloor, and it has
taken our study of rocks laid down in New Zealand, at the other end of the
Earth’s long history, to make sense of it.
We argue that the widely held view of the early Earth as a hotter place, free
of earthquakes and with a surface so weak it was unable to form rigid plates is
wrong.
Instead, the young Earth was continually rocked by large earthquakes, triggered
as one tectonic plate slid beneath another in a subduction zone as part of
plate tectonics – just like New Zealand today."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
