December 2021

Well-Preserved Embryo Found Inside Fossilized Dinosaur Egg

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGYYUs4x0S-xqMkRU8bnTsaQCIIvwW8kGWtDWswBayi_oRgML4sshZR0p7NqkAaIbWEu3nXy3kov0d0sTCw3CrkV-OTfB53jp6yET7uo1EBf8G0HLBrceJ5-YcotsmNEXRN8ReKS55vnSX7BAdcmGYBxMKpALtY1OSNAPy0DOcVZYb4P7vYdQ_Qi6n=s1306" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1306" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGYYUs4x0S-xqMkRU8bnTsaQCIIvwW8kGWtDWswBayi_oRgML4sshZR0p7NqkAaIbWEu3nXy3kov0d0sTCw3CrkV-OTfB53jp6yET7uo1EBf8G0HLBrceJ5-YcotsmNEXRN8ReKS55vnSX7BAdcmGYBxMKpALtY1OSNAPy0DOcVZYb4P7vYdQ_Qi6n=w640-h308" title="Photo of the oviraptorosaur embryo inside its fossilized egg. (Xing et al., iScience, 2021)" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo of the oviraptorosaur embryo inside its fossilized egg. (Xing et al., iScience, 2021)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>A rare look inside a fossilized dinosaur egg found in southern China has revealed an exquisitely preserved embryo—and evidence suggesting that some of these prehistoric creatures had even more in common with modern birds than previously thought.<br /></p><p>A 72 to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilised dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behaviour of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study.<br /><br />The embryo, dubbed 'Baby Yingliang', was discovered in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Ganzhou, southern China and belongs to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur. Among the most complete dinosaur embryos ever found, the fossil suggests that these dinosaurs developed bird-like postures close to hatching.<br /><br />Scientists found the posture of 'Baby Yingliang' unique among known dinosaur embryos -- its head lies below the body, with the feet on either side and the back curled along the blunt end of the egg. Previously unrecognised in dinosaurs, this posture is similar to that of modern bird embryos.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div><br />In modern birds, such postures are related to 'tucking' -- a behaviour controlled by the central nervous system and critical for hatching success. After studying egg and embryo, researchers believe that such pre-hatching behaviour, previously considered unique to birds, may have originated among non-avian theropods.<br /><br />Led by scientists from the University of Birmingham and China University of Geosciences (Beijing), the research team from institutions in China, UK and Canada today published its findings in iScience.<br /><br />The embryo is articulated in its life position without much disruption from fossilisation. Estimated to be 27 cm long from head to tail, the creature lies inside a 17-cm-long elongatoolithid egg. The specimen is housed in Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.<br /><br />Fion Waisum Ma, joint first author and PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, said: "Dinosaur embryos are some of the rarest fossils and most of them are incomplete with the bones dislocated. We are very excited about the discovery of 'Baby Yingliang' -- it is preserved in a great condition and helps us answer a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it.<br /><br />"It is interesting to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo pose in a similar way inside the egg, which possibly indicates similar prehatching behaviours."<br /><br />'Baby Yingliang' was identified as an oviraptorosaur based on its deep, toothless skull. Oviraptorosaurs are a group of feathered theropod dinosaurs, closely related to modern-day birds, known from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Their variable beak shapes and body sizes are likely to have allowed them to adopt a wide range of diets, including herbivory, omnivory and carnivory.<br /><br />Birds are known to develop a series of tucking postures, in which they bend their body and bring their head under their wing, soon before hatching. Embryos that fail to attain such postures have a higher chance of death due to unsuccessful hatching.<br /><br />By comparing 'Baby Yingliang' with the embryos of other theropods, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs and birds, the team proposed that tucking behaviour, which was considered unique to birds, first evolved in theropod dinosaurs many tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Additional discoveries of embryo fossils would be invaluable to further test this hypothesis.<br /><br />Professor Lida Xing from China University of Geosciences (Beijing), joint first author of the study, said: "This dinosaur embryo was acquired by the director of Yingliang Group, Mr Liang Liu, as suspected egg fossils around the 2000. During the construction of Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in 2010s, museum staff sorted through the storage and discovered the specimens.<br /><br />"These specimens were identified as dinosaur egg fossils. Fossil preparation was conducted and eventually unveiled the embryo hidden inside the egg. This is how 'Baby Yingliang' was brought to light."<br /><br />Professor Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team, said: "This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen. This little prenatal dinosaur looks just like a baby bird curled in its egg, which is yet more evidence that many features characteristic of today's birds first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors." </p><p><br /></p><p><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2021/12/embryo-found-inside-fossilised-dinosaur-egg.aspx" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #004276; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">Materials</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>provided by<span> </span></span><a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/index.aspx" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #004276; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">University of Birmingham</strong></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">.</span></span></i></u></p>

Well-Preserved Embryo Found Inside Fossilized Dinosaur Egg

Photo of the oviraptorosaur embryo inside its fossilized egg. (Xing et al., iScience, 2021) A rare look inside a fossilized dinosaur egg fou...

Ancient Pine Cone Trapped in Amber Shows a Super-Rare Form of Plant 'Parenting'

amber, Fossils 6:59 PM

<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrbwD1-B86ztofObkI5BW9wdIho1S7TytTupiRNLjCM2Y_0b43AOy9qYJizIkCiC_m3AUbeoN1XU8DuLCvc3jXgyJyBGok-gV09AYB0WF5iIlRWsm3kD3lXZSO2mib_M99gGIVd_XluHHwAReAPDDHkH4JHi1a-sF5dC64zRYMcqOD0-c6HRqwPShN=s1200" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ancient Pine Cone Trapped in Amber Shows a Super-Rare Form of Plant 'Parenting'" border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrbwD1-B86ztofObkI5BW9wdIho1S7TytTupiRNLjCM2Y_0b43AOy9qYJizIkCiC_m3AUbeoN1XU8DuLCvc3jXgyJyBGok-gV09AYB0WF5iIlRWsm3kD3lXZSO2mib_M99gGIVd_XluHHwAReAPDDHkH4JHi1a-sF5dC64zRYMcqOD0-c6HRqwPShN=w640-h300" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: (Poinar, Historical Biology, 2021)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /></p><p>An exceptional amber deposit from roughly 40 million years ago has captured a rare form of parental care in plants – so rare it's only been reported once before on Earth. In a paper published in Historical Biology, George Poinar Jr. of the Oregon State College of Science describes a pine cone, approximately 40 million years old, encased in Baltic amber from which several embryonic stems are emerging.<br /><br />“Crucial to the development of all plants, seed germination typically occurs in the ground after a seed has fallen,” said Poinar, an international expert in using plant and animal life forms preserved in amber to learn about the biology and ecology of the distant past. “We tend to associate viviparity – embryonic development while still inside the parent – with animals and forget that it does sometimes occur in plants.”<br /><br />Most typically, by far, those occurrences involve angiosperms, Poinar said. Angiosperms, which directly or indirectly provide most of the food people eat, have flowers and produce seeds enclosed in fruit.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div><br />“Seed germination in fruits is fairly common in plants that lack seed dormancy, like tomatoes, peppers and grapefruit, and it happens for a variety of reasons,” he said. “But it’s rare in gymnosperms.”<br /><br />Gymnosperms such as conifers produce “naked,” or non-enclosed, seeds. Precocious germination in pine cones is so rare that only one naturally occurring example of this condition, from 1965, has been described in the scientific literature, Poinar said.<br /><br />“That’s part of what makes this discovery so intriguing, even beyond that it’s the first fossil record of plant viviparity involving seed germination,” he said. “I find it fascinating that the seeds in this small pine cone could start to germinate inside the cone and the sprouts could grow out so far before they perished in the resin.”<br /><br />At the sprouts’ tips are needle clusters, some in bundles of five, associating the fossil with the extinct pine species Pinus cembrifolia, which was previously described from Baltic amber, Poinar said.<br /><br />Pine cones in Baltic amber are not commonly found, he added. The ones that do appear are prized by collectors and because the cones’ scales are hard, they’re usually very well preserved and appear lifelike.<br /><br />Viviparity in plants typically shows up in one of two ways, Poinar said. Precocious germination is the more common of the two, the other being vegetative viviparity, such as when a bulbil emerges directly from the flower head of a parent plant.<br /><br />“In the case of seed viviparity in this fossil, the seeds produced embryonic stems that are quite evident in the amber,” he said. “Whether those stems, known as hypocotyls, appeared before the cone became encased in amber is unclear. However, based on their position, it appears that some growth, if not most, occurred after the pine cone fell into the resin.<br /><br />“Often some activity occurs after creatures are entombed in resin, such as entrapped insects depositing eggs,” Poinar said. “Also, insect parasites sometimes flee their hosts into the resin after the latter become trapped. In the case of the pine cone, the cuticle covering the exposed portions of the shoots could have protected them from rapid entrance of the resin’s natural fixatives.”<br /><br />Research on viviparity in extant gymnosperms suggests the condition could be linked to winter frosts. Light frosts would have been possible if the Baltic amber forest had a humid, warm-temperate environment as has been posited, Poinar said.<br /><br />“This is the first fossil record of seed viviparity in plants but this condition probably occurred quite a bit earlier than this Eocene record,” he said. “There’s no reason why vegetative viviparity couldn’t have occurred hundreds of millions of years ago in ancient spore-bearing plants like ferns and lycopods.”</p><p><br /></p><p><i><u>The above story is based on <a href="https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-study-yields-first-fossil-research-seeds-sprouting-amber-encased-pine-cone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Oregon State University.</a><br /></u></i></p>

Ancient Pine Cone Trapped in Amber Shows a Super-Rare Form of Plant 'Parenting'

Photo: (Poinar, Historical Biology, 2021) An exceptional amber deposit from roughly 40 million years ago has captured a rare form of paren...

Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates

Minerals 6:52 PM

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkMcfpIpwsWmSqczD7HHdce3L6XhCznaazh3bF49kGVBMUMQY4d7dn3-obcQubIg5DWJfhrgmm5LQjPyzTrcCA7mVjGGunXCPAjyjTAVKfyDeha1-_1fS25z6rmCAM4s0OVCEsv-3YaSSdeGa-sfEv3hFi-RdoyvikM63RvDYoDrS-EF5Jpye45ge-/s1024/conichtgrtsw%20-%20Kopie%20(3)%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates" border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="1024" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkMcfpIpwsWmSqczD7HHdce3L6XhCznaazh3bF49kGVBMUMQY4d7dn3-obcQubIg5DWJfhrgmm5LQjPyzTrcCA7mVjGGunXCPAjyjTAVKfyDeha1-_1fS25z6rmCAM4s0OVCEsv-3YaSSdeGa-sfEv3hFi-RdoyvikM63RvDYoDrS-EF5Jpye45ge-/w640-h386/conichtgrtsw%20-%20Kopie%20(3)%20(1).jpg" title="Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates. Photo: Mintreasure.com</td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Exceptional apple green conichalcite aggregates with cuprite and chrysocolla on matrix </span><br /></p><p>Conichalcite, CaCu, is a relatively common arsenate mineral related to duftite. It is green, often botryoidal, and occurs in the oxidation zone of some metal deposits. It occurs with limonite, malachite, beudantite, adamite, cuproadamite, olivenite and smithsonite</p><p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Conichalcite | ‪#‎Geology </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Formula: </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>CaCu(AsO<sub>4</sub>)(OH)</span></span><br />
System: Orthorhombic<br />
Colour: Bright green, with ... <br />
Hardness:  4½ <br />
Streak: Light green </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">  </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyC7lMQMN3FJiHO350aGNbWxfpRNvMBBoP6aFAq3tXq5UHvGkf-GDtXnmylQ4n3KQKM7BQJKUEHFCZVDUw2g6wxynlbn3BpikCk_O3wdF8w1sceQ5lrc1D_ST7bkB-BBR2WWLuhnovfBq81JeIPtobbh7aXIBttm63lzLngjGNt-IkiwoJhR9N1W5/s779/conichtgrtsw%20-%20Kopie%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="779" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyC7lMQMN3FJiHO350aGNbWxfpRNvMBBoP6aFAq3tXq5UHvGkf-GDtXnmylQ4n3KQKM7BQJKUEHFCZVDUw2g6wxynlbn3BpikCk_O3wdF8w1sceQ5lrc1D_ST7bkB-BBR2WWLuhnovfBq81JeIPtobbh7aXIBttm63lzLngjGNt-IkiwoJhR9N1W5/w400-h394/conichtgrtsw%20-%20Kopie%20(1).jpg" title="Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates. Photo: Mintreasure.com</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conichalcite forms in the oxidation zones of copper orebodies. Here groundwater enriched with oxygen reacts with copper sulfide and copper oxide to produce an array of minerals such as malachite, azurite and linarite. Conichalcite is often found encrusted on to limonitic rocks that have yellow to red colors. </span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Locality: </b>Clara Mine, Oberwolfach, Freiburg Region, Baden-Württemberg, Germany </span> <br /></p>

Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates

Conichalcite Crysyals Aggregates. Photo: Mintreasure.com Exceptional apple green conichalcite aggregates with cuprite and chrysocolla on m...

Turtle Egg 90 Million Years Old, Larger Than Humans

extinction, Fossils 8:43 PM

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zBr5NFjvxR8MXkdGpfK2PMA_dylrg3flgOb9NIVMKwlYK6C8n1pN71lV4t9IhtiDRfA9-mMD7UScHby5z5nbzxMmoEHPWCF19nn6uKlbLwKgWNFWyUs4TDow4K0mmz1i9TA_cm9A08f4PMEqbNLn9hQpPMU6DPqp2pboUBNBvJ7TmHzlK85_49-x/s1210/Turtle%20Egg%2090%20Million%20Years%20Old,%20Larger%20Than%20Humans%20%20(1).jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A tennis-ball-sized fossilized turtle egg, containing an almost fully developed embryo, was unearthed in east-central China. Nanhsiungchelyids" border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1210" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zBr5NFjvxR8MXkdGpfK2PMA_dylrg3flgOb9NIVMKwlYK6C8n1pN71lV4t9IhtiDRfA9-mMD7UScHby5z5nbzxMmoEHPWCF19nn6uKlbLwKgWNFWyUs4TDow4K0mmz1i9TA_cm9A08f4PMEqbNLn9hQpPMU6DPqp2pboUBNBvJ7TmHzlK85_49-x/w640-h360/Turtle%20Egg%2090%20Million%20Years%20Old,%20Larger%20Than%20Humans%20%20(1).jpeg" title="Turtle Egg 90 Million Years Old, Larger Than Humans" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tennis-ball-sized fossilized turtle egg, containing an almost fully developed embryo, was unearthed in east-central China. Nanhsiungchelyids are an extinct family of land turtles found in Cretaceous deposits in Asia and North America. (Royal Tyrrell Museum/Zenger)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hell’s Shells: 90 Million-Year-Old Egg From Turtle Bigger Than Humans<br /><br />A giant fossilized turtle egg — believed to have been laid by a turtle the length of a fully grown human 90 million years ago — has been found with the embryo inside.</span><br /></p><p>A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China and Canada has identified a turtle egg fossil from the Cretaceous period that contains an embryo. In their paper published in <i>Proceedings of the Royal Society B</i>, the group describes where the egg was found and what they learned about it during their examination.<br /><br />Finding the eggs of dinosaurs or turtles from the Cretaceous period is extremely rare—their fragile nature makes it difficult for them to survive to the present, even in prime conditions. Finding a fossilized embryo still inside such an egg is even more rare. But that is just what the team in China discovered when they visited a farmer in China's Henan Province. He had inadvertently dug up what he had described as several strange-looking rocks. One of those rocks turned out to be a turtle egg that the team dated to a time during the Cretaceous period, somewhere between 66 and 145 million years ago.<br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;">
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</div><br />In studying the egg using a variety of techniques, including micro-computed tomography, the researchers were able to see that the egg was from a turtle that had belonged to a group known as nanhsiungchelyids—a land-dwelling species wiped out by the same impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Prior research has shown that they were all quite large. <p></p><p>The specimen that had laid the egg found by the farmer likely had a shell diameter of up to a meter and a half. To learn more about its characteristics, the researchers recreated the embryo with a 3D software application. In so doing, they found flat ribs that are characteristic of modern baby turtles. As the turtle grows, they form the basis of the shell. The researchers suggest that the ancient turtle likely was not much different from modern turtles, with one exception—an extremely thick eggshell.<br /><br />As a rule, eggshells are pretty thin, whether from birds or turtles. This is because the little creature growing inside must at some point break its way out. With a shell nearly two millimeters thick, the baby inside the ancient egg would have required some special abilities to make its way into the world.<br /></p><p></p><p></p><p><br /><i><u>The above story is based on <a href="Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by  Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum.</u></i><br /></p>

Turtle Egg 90 Million Years Old, Larger Than Humans

A tennis-ball-sized fossilized turtle egg, containing an almost fully developed embryo, was unearthed in east-central China. Nanhsiungchelyi...

Earth’s Early Magma Oceans Detected in 3.7 Billion Year-Old Greenland Rocks

earth, Earth History, Tectonic 6:42 PM

<p style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gzZeo72ilp0/YaeWvi5RhFI/AAAAAAAATaw/g8ABKS_yn2cWtd5qw7xpyl1Y3L5H1iW-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2000/Earth-Core-Mantle-Crust%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gzZeo72ilp0/YaeWvi5RhFI/AAAAAAAATaw/g8ABKS_yn2cWtd5qw7xpyl1Y3L5H1iW-wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h426/Earth-Core-Mantle-Crust%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="The Earth is now composed of the inner core, the outer core, the lower mantle, the upper mantle, and the crust." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Earth is now composed of the inner core, the outer core, the lower mantle, the upper mantle, and the crust.</td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p style="text-align: left;">Earth hasn’t always been a blue and green oasis of life in an otherwise inhospitable solar system. During our planet’s first 50 million years, around 4.5 billion years ago, its surface was a hellscape of magma oceans, bubbling and belching with heat from Earth’s interior.<br /><br />The subsequent cooling of the planet from this molten state, and the crystallization of these magma oceans into solid rock, was a defining stage in the assembly of our planet’s structure, the chemistry of its surface, and the formation of its early atmosphere.<br /><br />These primeval rocks, containing clues that might explain Earth’s habitability, were assumed to have been lost to the ravages of plate tectonics. But now, my team has discovered the chemical remnants of Earth’s magma oceans in 3.7 billion year-old rocks from southern Greenland, revealing a tantalizing snapshot of a time when the Earth was almost entirely molten.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Hell on Earth</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Earth is the product of a chaotic early solar system, which is believed to have featured a number of catastrophic impacts between the Earth and other planetary bodies. The formation of Earth culminated in its collision with a Mars-sized impactor planet, which also resulted in the formation of Earth’s moon some 4.5 billion years ago.<br /><br />These cosmic clashes are thought to have generated enough energy to melt the Earth’s crust and almost all of our planet’s interior (the mantle), creating planetary-scale volumes of molten rock that formed “magma oceans” hundreds of kilometers in depth. Today, in contrast, Earth’s crust is entirely solid, and the mantle is seen as a “plastic solid”: allowing slow, viscous geological movement a far cry from the liquid magma of Earth’s early mantle.<br /><br />As the Earth recovered and cooled after its chaotic collisions, its deep magma oceans crystallized and solidified, beginning Earth’s journey to the planet we know today. The volcanic gases which bubbled out of Earth’s cooling magma oceans may have been decisive in the formation and composition of our planet’s early atmosphere – which would eventually support life.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Geological search</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Finding geological evidence for the Earth’s former molten state is extremely difficult. This is because magma ocean events are likely to have taken place over 4 billion years ago, and many of the rocks from that period of Earth’s history have since been recycled by plate tectonics.<br /><br />But while rocks from this period no longer exist, their chemical traces may still be stored in Earth’s depths. Solidified crystals from Earth’s cooling period would have been so dense that they’d have sunk to the base of Earth’s mantle. Scientists even believe that these mineral residues may be stored in isolated zones deep within Earth’s mantle-core boundary.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div><br />If they do exist, these ancient crystal graveyards are inaccessible to us – hiding far too deep for us to take direct samples. And if they were to ever rise to the Earth’s surface, the magma ocean crystals would naturally undergo a process of melting and solidifying, leaving only traces of their origins in the volcanic rocks that make it to Earth’s crust.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Crystal clues</h4><p style="text-align: left;">We knew Greenland would be a good place to search for these traces of Earth’s molten past. Our samples originate from the Isua supracrustal belt in southwestern Greenland, which is a famous area for geologists. At first glance, Isua’s rocks look just like any modern basalt you’d find on the seafloor. But these rocks are some of the oldest in the world, believed to be between 3.7 and 3.8 billion years old.<br /><br />On analyzing Isua’s rocks, we discovered unique iron isotope signatures. These signatures showed that the region of the mantle from which the rocks had formed had been subjected to very high pressure, over 700 kilometers below Earth’s surface. That’s exactly where minerals formed during magma ocean crystallization would have been located.<br /><br />But if these rocks did indeed bear traces of crystallized magma ocean, how did they find their way to the Earth’s surface? The answer lies in how the Earth’s interior melts, producing volcanic rocks on the planet’s surface.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Melting rocks</h4><p style="text-align: left;">When regions of the Earth’s semi-solid mantle heat up and melt, they rise buoyantly towards the Earth’s crust, ultimately producing volcanic rocks when the magma reaches the surface and cools. By studying the chemistry of these rocks on the surface, we can probe the composition of the material that melted to form them.<br /><br />The isotopic makeup of Isua rocks revealed that their journey to Earth’s surface involved several stages of crystallization and remelting in the interior of the planet – a kind of distillation process on their way to the surface. But the rocks that emerged, located in present-day Greenland, still retain chemical signatures that connect them to Earth’s magma-covered past.<br /><br />The results of our work provide some of the first direct geological evidence for the signature of magma ocean crystals in volcanic rocks found on Earth’s surface. Now, we’d like to understand whether other ancient volcanic rocks across the world can tell us more about Earth’s former magma oceans, or whether we’ve instead stumbled upon a geological oddity: more of a one-off clue.<br /><br />If other volcanoes may have spewed similar geological artifacts, we might also look to modern eruption hotspots such as Hawaii and Iceland for further isotopic novelties that speak of Earth’s ancient past. It’s possible that more primordial rocks may be found in the future which could help us understand more about the Earth’s violent, magma-covered past.</p><br /><div><div><div><div>Written by Helen M. Williams, Reader in Geochemistry, University of Cambridge.<i><u><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /><br />This article was first published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</span></u></i><p> </p></div></div></div></div>

Earth’s Early Magma Oceans Detected in 3.7 Billion Year-Old Greenland Rocks

The Earth is now composed of the inner core, the outer core, the lower mantle, the upper mantle, and the crust. Earth hasn’t always been a...

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Earth’s Early Magma Oceans Detected in 3.7 Billion Year-Old Greenland Rocks

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