UCLA remote cluster of Scottish islands could help solve one of our planet's biggest mysteries, scientists say.
Researchers have discovered that the Carvellach Islands, off the west coast of Scotland, are the best record of Earth entering its greatest ice age 720 million years ago.
The Great Freeze, known as « Snowball Earth, » covered almost all of the world in two phases over 80 million years, after which the first animal life appeared.
Clues about the frost hidden in the rocks have been destroyed everywhere – except Carvellaux. Researchers hope the islands will tell us why the Earth went into superglacial conditions for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.
SPLRock layers can be thought of as the pages of a history book – each layer contains details about the state of the Earth in the distant past.
But the critical period leading up to the Ice Ball Earth was thought to have disappeared because the rock layers were eroded away by the Great Glacial.
Now a new study by researchers at University College London has revealed that Carvellaux somehow escaped unscathed. It may be the only place on Earth with a detailed record of how Earth entered one of the most cataclysmic periods in its history — as well as what happened hundreds of millions of years ago when the first animal life appeared when the ice sheet melted.
Scotland was in a completely different place then because the continents had moved over time. It was south of Earth's equator and had a tropical climate until it and the rest of the planet became covered in ice.
« We're capturing a moment of entry into an ice age in Scotland that is missing everywhere else in the world, » Professor Graham Shields of University College London, who led the research, told BBC News.
« Millions of important years are missing elsewhere due to glacial erosion – but they are all present in the rock layers at Carvellaux. »
The islands in Scotland's Inner Hebrides are uninhabited, except for a team of scientists working from a separate building on the main island, which also contains the ruins of a 6th-century Celtic monastery.
The breakthrough was made by Professor Shield's PhD student, Elias Ruegen, and the results are published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London. Elias was the first to date the rock strata and identify them from a critical period that is distinct from all other rock formations in all other parts of the world.
His discovery puts Carvellocks in one of science's greatest accolades: gold-spiked hammers in places identified as the best record of planet-changing geologic moments — though the spike is actually made of gold to deter thieves.
UCLElias took many of Golden Spike's judges, formally known as members of the « Cryogenian Sub-Commission, » to the rock faces several times to press his case.
The next step is to allow the wider geographic community to voice any objections or come up with a better candidate. If nothing else, you can hit a spike in the next year.
The prize will boost the scientific profile of the site and attract more research funding.
