Scientists think they've uncovered evidence of the oldest glaciers ever found, in ancient rocks speckled with oxygen isotopes lying beneath the world's largest gold deposits in South Africa.
situated near Durban on the east coast of South Africa that2.9 billion years old, making them the oldest known on Earth., as the layers of rock are known, has hardly been disturbed since it was laid down with the flooding of an inland sea all those years ago.explains"These deposits are fossilized glacial moraines, which are basically the debris left by a glacier as it gradually melts and contracts.
Bindeman and colleagues measured levels of oxygen isotopes in sandstone and shale samples from the Pongola Supergroup, finding they had the lowest levels of oxygen-18 of any similar deposits analyzed so far. They also had very high amounts of oxygen-17, indicating the rocks formed at colder temperatures.Bindeman."Couple that geochemical evidence with the moraine evidence, and it means glaciers – the oldest glaciers yet found on Earth.
Rock samples from the 2.9-million-year-old Pongola Supergroup had some of the lowest levels of oxygen-18 when compared to
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