New research helps to understand how plate tectonics promotes life on earth.
- Plate tonic is responsible for the deep carbon and deep water cycles.
- The arrangement of continents has changed the sea level in the past.
- The evolution of life is adapted by tectonics – continents are floats with evolving species that mix as continents.
- A growing focus on renewable and low-carbon technologies will mean we need to find more copper and other resources. Finding these deposits will help our new models of plate tectonics reduce the environmental footprint of mineral exploration and mining.
Geoscientists have released a video showing for the first time the continuous movement of the earth’s tectonic plates during the last billion years.
The international effort provides a scientific framework for understanding planetary habitability and finding critical metal resources needed for a low-carbon future.
It reveals a planet that is constantly moving as land masses move around the earth’s surface, showing for example that Antarctica was once at the equator.
The video is based on new research published in the March 2021 issue Geoscientific reviews.
Video showing the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates over the past billion years. Credit: Dr. Andrew Merdith / University of Lyon
Professor Dietmar Müller, co-author and academic leader of the University of Sydney EarthByte Group for Earth Sciences, said: “Our team has created a completely new model of the evolution of the earth over the past billion years.
Professor Dietmar Müller of the EarthByte Group in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Sydney. Credit: Britta Campion
“Our planet is unique in the way it houses life. But this is only possible because geological processes, such as plate tectonics, provide a planetary life support system. ‘
Lead author and creator of the video, dr. Andrew Merdith, started working on the project while a PhD student with Professor Müller at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Sydney. He is now based at the University of Lyon in France.
Co-author, dr. Michael Tetley, who also completed his doctorate at the University of Sydney, told Euronews: ‘For the first time, a complete model of tectonics has been built, with all the boundaries’
On a human time scale, things move in centimeters per year, but as we can see from the animation, the continents have been everywhere over time. A place like Antarctica that we see today as a cold, icy inhospitable place was actually once a nice vacation destination at the equator. ”
Co-author, dr. Sabin Zahirovic, of the University of Sydney, said: “The planet Earth is incredibly dynamic, with the surface made up of ‘plates’ constantly kicking each other in a unique way beneath the famous rocky planets. These plates move with the rapid growth of the nails, but if a billion years are proclaimed in 40 seconds, an enchanting dance is revealed.
“Oceans are opening up and closing down, continents are spreading and recombining regularly into huge supercontinents.”
Earth scientists from each continent have collected and published data, often from inaccessible and remote regions, which dr. Andrew Merdith and his associates have assimilated over the past four years to produce this billion-year-old model.
This will enable scientists to better understand how the inside of the earth dissipates heat, mixes chemically and loses heat by dispersing the seabed and volcanism. The model will help scientists understand how climate has changed, how ocean currents have changed and how nutrients have flowed from the deep earth to stimulate biological evolution.
Professor Müller said: “Put simply, this complete model will help explain how our house, Planet Earth, became habitable for complex beings. Life on earth would not exist without plate tectonics. With this new model we are closer to understanding how this beautiful blue planet became our cradle. ”
Reference: “Expanding the Complete Plate Tectonic Models in Deep Time: The Linking of the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic” by Andrew S. Merdith, Simon E. Williams, Alan S. Collins, Michael G. Tetley, Jacob A. Mulder, Morgan L. Blades, Alexander Young, Sheree E. Armistead, John Cannon, Sabin Zahirovic, and R. Dietmar Müller, December 24, 2020, Geoscientific reviews.
DOI: 10.1016 / j.earscirev.2020.103477