Earth & Environment - Tuesday, May 4, 2010 7:50 - 3 Comments

Carbon cycle snowballed out of control

Princeton graduate students Catherine Rose and Nicholas Swanson-Hysell stand at the boundary of the Cryogenian and Ediacaran periods, distinguishable by the different colors of the glacial rocks below and the carbonate rock above. Geologists analyzed carbon samples from the hills of the Trezona Formation in South Australia to document one of the largest perturbations to the carbon cycle in all of Earth history. (Credit: Adam Maloof)

PRINCETON (US)—New evidence uncovered by a team of geologists suggests that an episode 720 million years ago called “snowball Earth,” which may have covered the continents and oceans in a thick sheet of ice, produced a dramatic change in the carbon cycle. Continue…