Ancient life may have found a way to survive on ‘Slushball Earth’
A new study suggests that some form of life may have found a way to survive on Earth during the extreme frozen periods
Our planet has gone through extreme periods when the global surface was covered in ice. These harsh ice periods made survival more difficult for early life forms.
A team of researchers from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan conducted the new study.
Snowball Earth or Slushball Earth?
Two widely held hypotheses describe the Earth’s intense glacial periods: “Snowball Earth” and “Slushball Earth” events.
The snowball theory holds that the Earth was completely covered in ice, whereas the Slushball theory indicates that the land was not completely frozen during extreme glaciation.
For experts, it has been a subject of an ongoing debate whether or not complex life thrived through the Marinoan Snowball Earth glaciation, which occurred about 654–635 million years ago.
There is also little fossil evidence to help us understand their survival conditions. However, this new study adds to the missing picture of Earth back then.
The press release states that “habitable marine environments for the earliest forms of complex life may have been more extensive” than earlier estimated. Further adding, “habitable open-ocean conditions may have persisted even up to the mid-latitudes during the proposed ‘Snowball Earth’ event.”
Simply put, the new findings point towards the Slushball Earth event theory during the Marinoan Ice Age.
The paper suggests that there could have been patches of open waters that provided refuge and allowed some early organisms to survive the Earth’s extreme conditions.
The researchers arrived at this conclusion after studying the geochemical composition of fossil-rich sediments found in the late Cryogenian Nantuo Formation in south China. These fossil sediments were formed nearly 654-635 million years ago.
The fossils bear striking similarities to “seafloor-dwelling photosynthesizing algae.”
“Additionally, the iron chemistry indicated that the deep water was poorly oxygenated, but aerobic nitrogen recycling likely occurred in oxygenated surface water.
During the Snowball Earth glaciation, these sediments were found to be deposited between 30–40 degrees north, substantially further north than any unfrozen ocean may have been expected,” explains the official statement.
The presence of these open-ocean sites could have provided a haven for the organisms. This means the planet was more “Slushball Earth” than “Snowball Earth.”
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