The scientists consider that the 600-million-year-old ocean water can present the evolution of oceans, and even life.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Scientists of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Niigata University, Japan, have found droplets of water trapped in mineral deposits in the Himalayas that have been doubtless left behind from an historical ocean which existed round 600 million years in the past.
The scientists consider that the 600-million-year-old ocean water from the Himalayas can present the evolution of oceans, and even life, in Earth’s historical past.
Snowball Earth glaciation
IISc mentioned that scientists consider that between 700 to 500 million years in the past, thick sheets of ice coated the Earth for an prolonged interval, referred to as the Snowball Earth glaciation (one of many main glacial occasions in Earth’s historical past).
What adopted this was a rise in the quantity of oxygen in the Earth’s ambiance, referred to as the Second Great Oxygenation Event, which finally led to the evolution of advanced life kinds.
So far, scientists haven’t totally understood how these occasions have been linked because of the lack of well-preserved fossils and the disappearance of all previous oceans that existed in the Earth’s historical past. Exposures of such marine rocks in the Himalayas can present some solutions, the institute mentioned.
A time capsule
“We have found a time capsule for paleo oceans. We don’t know much about past oceans. 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? Such insights could also provide clues about the Earth’s past climate, and this information can be useful for climate modelling,” mentioned Prakash Chandra Arya, Ph.D. scholar on the Centre for Earth Sciences (CEaS), IISc, and first writer of the research printed in Precambrian Research.
The deposits discovered by the group – which date again to across the time of the Snowball Earth glaciation – confirmed that the sedimentary basins have been disadvantaged of calcium for an prolonged interval, in all probability attributable to low riverine enter.
The lengthy hunt
IISc mentioned that the group hunted for these deposits throughout an extended stretch of the western Kumaon Himalayas, extending from Amritpur to the Milam glacier, and Dehradun to the Gangotri glacier area.
Using intensive laboratory evaluation, they have been capable of verify that the deposits are a product of precipitation from historical ocean water, and never from different locations, such because the Earth’s inside (for instance, from submarine volcanic exercise).
