The new research on unique sandstone formations in the Colorado Rocky Mountains may confirm that Earth experience a massive, planet-wide freeze known as “Snowball Earth.” About 700 million years ago, Earth’s surface was encase in ice, creating an extreme climate where early life not only survive but later evolve into complex multicellular organisms.
For decades, the Snowball Earth hypothesis was support primarily by coastal sedimentary rocks and climate models.
But, solid evidence of ice sheets reaching the planet’s equatorial interior has remain elusive, till now.
The recent study, publish in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies unusual sandstone deposits call as Tava, find within the granite formations of Colorado’s Pikes Peak.
These sandstones likely form under the pressure of ice sheets, supporting the Snowball Earth theory with new geological evidence.
Pikes Peak, a sacre site known to the Ute people as Tavá Kaa-vi, is the source of these Tava sandstone formations.
Researchers discover that the sandstones form when sandy, water-saturate sediment was force into weaken rock by the immense weight of ice sheets.
The study’s lead authors, Christine Siddoway and Rebecca Flowers, use advance radiometric dating to determine that Tava sandstones develop around 690 to 660 million years ago, aligning with the Cryogenian Period.
Using iron minerals find with the sandstone, Siddoway’s team employe uranium-lead dating to confirm the Tava sandstone’s origins within the Snowball Earth timeframe.
The team suggests that the ice sheets covering the equatorial Laurentia landmass, now part of North America, create the pressures necessary to form these sandstone injectites.
This discovery strengthens the Snowball Earth hypothesis while also shedding light on other geological phenomena, including “unconformities” where erosion has remove large portions of Earth’s rock record.
The findings at Pikes Peak indicate that similar unconformities may predate Snowball Earth, suggesting complex erosion processes over millions of years.
Researchers hope these insights will lead to a deeper understanding of Earth’s climate history and the processes that shape our habitable planet.
