March
04
/ 2020
The Earth of 3.2 billion years ago was a "water world" of submerged continents, geologists say after analyzing oxygen isotope data from ancient ocean crust that's now exposed on land in Australia. And that could have major implications on the origin of life. "An early Earth without emergent continents may have resembled a 'water world,' providing an important environmental constraint on the origin and evolution of life on Earth as well as its possible existence elsewhere." So wrote geologists Benjamin Johnson and Boswell Wing in a paper just published online by the journal Nature Geoscience. Johnson is an assistant professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State University and a recent postdoctoral research associate at the University of Colorado
