During the Proterozoic, the Earth did not grow taller – the tectonic processes that form mountains were stopped, leaving continents without high mountains for nearly 1 billion years, according to a new study. Because mountain formation is critical to nutrient cycling, the prolonged shift in crippling activity could have led to the “boring billions”, a bird in which the evolution of Earth life has stopped. Over geological time zones, even mountains are unusual. The massive tectonic forces that drive large patches of the planet’s skywards are opposed to intermittent erosion processes. As the Earth’s crust grows thicker, it is challenging to monitor mountain formation over a deep period of time, but it is crucial to understanding the evolution of the planet’s surface and its life. she is alive. Here, Ming Tang and colleagues present a new agent for understanding the processes of mountain (orogenic) formation. Using europium irregularities in grinding zircons from ancient landscapes to estimate the thickness of the crust’s thickness over Earth’s history, Tang et al. discovered that the formation of mountains was halted for nearly a billion years in the middle ages of the Earth. While the continental crust was thick and active during the Archean and Phanerozoic birds, the Proterozoic had little activity, resulting in a steady decline in bark thickness as mountains slowly eroded. . The authors suggest that this orogenic quiescence may be associated with the Nuna-Rodina superficiality, which may have altered the thermal structure of the cortex, weakening the activity of the large- above ground. With no new nutrients being delivered to the planet’s surface, the changes could have led to a persistent famine in the oceans and, therefore, the evolution of life stopped for a time.
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