Observatoire des droits humains (anglais seulement)

Giant glaciers pulverised Earth’s ancient rocks, setting the stage for complex life

(Version anglaise seulement)

par Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University

Imagine floating in space, gazing on a frozen white orb. The ball hangs in the void, lonely and gleaming in the light from its star. From pole to equator, the sphere is covered in a thick crust of ice. In orbit around the white planet is a single cratered moon.

You are gazing on Earth in the Cryogenian period, 700 million years ago. This is about three times as long ago as the earliest dinosaurs roamed – but still not long in the scheme of Earth’s mind-bending 4.5 billion years of history.

During the Cryogenian, our planet was plunged into a series…

Lire l'article complet