A sliver of four-billion-year-old sea floor has offered a glimpse into the inner workings of an adolescent Earth. The baked and twisted rocks, now part of Greenland, show the earliest evidence of plate tectonics, colossal movements of the planet's outer shell. Until now, researchers were unable to say when the process, which explains how oceans and continents form, began. The unique find, described in the journal Science, shows the movements started soon after the planet formed. "Since the plate tectonic paradigm is the framework in which we interpret all modern-daygeology, it is important to know how far back in time it operated," said Professor Minik Rosing of the University of Copenhagen and one of the authors of the paper.
Sea floor is not normally preserved for more than 200 million years. Professor John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison described the work as "significant" and "exciting". "If these observations are substantiated it will be a significant line of new evidence indicating that plate tectonics was active and familiar as early as 3.8 million years ago," he said. "That really is an important conclusion." Plate tectonics is a geological theoryused to explain the observed large-scale motions of the Earth's surface. The relatively thin outer shell of the planet is composed of two layers: the lithosphere and the asthenosphere. Ancient pillow lavas are preserved in exquisite detail The lithosphere - made up of the outer crust and the top-most layer of the underlying mantle - is broken up into huge plates; seven major plates and several smaller ones.To view the rest of this article, please visit the source
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Posted on Friday, March 23 - 2007
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Reference : Super Science & Technology, Natures Mysteries
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Paranormal Category List (A-Z)All our articles are sorted under categories and topics, making it easier to cross reference different subjects. Below are all the different categories the articles are sorted under alphabetically. |
Climate change and phenomena
Study explains rainforest similarities
Did comets cause killer cold spell ?
Ancient tsunami 'hit New York'
Prehistoric jungles laughed at global warming
Massive ice chunks break up in Antarctica
Animal Language
Global warming could change Earths tilt
Giant hailstones - how big can they get ?