Our entire planet was likely covered in ice more than 600 million years ago, study finds

Anyone who lived on Earth between 720 and 635 million years ago would probably need much thicker clothes.

Geologists have long suspected that the Earth's temperature dropped dramatically during that time, resulting in a so-called "snowball" Earth.

But they have debated quite a bit about how icy the planet became — specifically, whether thick ice covered the entire globe.

Now, new evidence found in the Tavakaiv, or "Tava," sandstones in the Colorado Rockies supports the notion that Snowball was indeed a global phenomenon.

"This study provides the first physical evidence that cold reached the heart of the continents," said Liam Courtney-Davies, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The scientists collected mineral samples from the Tava rocks, which are rich in iron oxide, and the team then hit them with a laser, releasing tiny amounts of the radioactive element uranium. yahoonews.

Reportedly, with this technique the researchers were able to discern when the rocks might have settled underground – somewhere between 690 and 660 million years ago, in the middle of the suspected Snowball phase.

Courtney-Davies also added that knowing more about this period in Earth's history could help scientists understand the relationship between Earth's climate and major evolutionary transitions in the history of life.

For example, the first multicellular organisms, the ancestors of modern animals and plants, are thought to have appeared in the oceans not long after the Snowball finally melted.

"You have the climate that is evolving and you have life that is evolving with it. All of these things happened during the Snowball Land upheaval," said Courtney-Davies.

"We need to better characterize this entire time period to understand how we and the planet evolved together," he added.

Otherwise, the study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. /Telegraph/