Supermountains And The Evolution Of Life

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In ancient times, supermountains stood over supercontinents. High as the Himalayas and roughly as long. Coincidentally, they appear just the first eukaryote appeared. Or was it just a coincidence?


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Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Do you ever feel the Earth has large mountains? Well, the Himalayas aren’t bad. But even they pale in comparison with supermountains that stood over the Earth eons ago. Just try to imagine it. Mountain ranges at least as tall as the Himalayas but four times as long. Scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) researched terrestrial supermountains in history and noticed that their existence seems to coincide with some of life’s major milestones.

Ziyi Zhu and her colleagues tracked down the existence of these incredible geological megastructures in history using ancient zircons with a dash of exotic lutetium. As far as we know, this combination of minerals and elements can be found only at the roots of extremely high mountains as the minerals are born at extreme pressures.

Zhu and her colleagues found that the vast majority of Earth’s supermountains were created only in two periods of Earth’s history. The older took place about 2,000 to 1,800 million years ago and the younger about 650 – 500 million years ago. They went over the whole over the ancient supercontinents to a length of about 8,000 kilometers. You can’t see anything like it on Earth anymore.

The older supermountains were named Nuna Supermountain. They stood over Earth at about the same time when the first eukaryotes appeared. The younger supermountains called Transgondwanan Supermountains were witnesses to the creation of the first large animals about 575 million years ago. Shortly after that, the first key animal strains appeared.

As the supermountains eroded, a large number of nutrients such as phosphorous and iron got into the ocean. That allowed biogeochemical cycles to start running the evolution of more complex life. Supermountains might have also increased the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere as the increase also coincides with the periods when supermountains existed.

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