An ancient piece of Earth’s crust has been found beneath the South West of Western Australia.
Researchers from Curtin University have found evidence of an ancient piece of Earth’s crust beneath the South West of Western Australia. The work is believed to be nearly four billion years old. According to Scitechdaily, the scientists used a laser smaller than a human hair to target microscopic particles of minerals extracted from beach sand. The Age Mineral Systems Group at Curtin’s . School The earth and Planetary Science, by Ph.D. student Maximilian Droellner, explains that lasers are used to vaporize portions of the individual grains of the mineral zircon to get detailed information about its initial erosion.
“There is evidence that a 4-billion-year-old piece of crust the size of Ireland has influenced the geological evolution of WA over the past few billion years,” said Droellner. He also claims that the particles found in the study were the main component of the rock that formed in WA during this time. He explained that part of the crust existed through many mid-mountain-building events AustraliaIndia and Antarctica and seems to still exist at depths of tens of kilometers in the southwest corner of WA.
When compared with existing data, it was found that not only Australia, India and Antarctica, but also other regions of the world experienced similar periods of early crust formation and preservation. And this shows a significant change in the evolution of the Earth about four billion years ago, when the meteorite bombardment decreased, the crust stabilized and life on Earth began to develop.
The study’s supervisor, Dr Milo Barham, said, “The margin of the ancient crust appears to define an important crustal boundary that controls where economically important minerals are found.” He also shared that the remains of this ancient crust will play an important role in studying the future of optimized sustainable resource discovery.
