Explosion in ocean life 2 billion years ago helped create Earth's mountains, ...

Explosion in ocean life 2 billion years ago helped create Earth's mountains, ...
Explosion in ocean life 2 billion years ago helped create Earth's mountains, ...

An explosion of ocean life two billion years ago helped form the mountains on Earth, including the iconic Himalayas, a new study reveals.

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen found that after a dramatic rise in oxygen about 2.3 billion years ago, an abundance of nutrients filled the seas that resulted in cyanobacteria, or plankton.

Once the large amounts of plankton died, they fell to the ocean floor and formed graphite, which played a crucial role in lubricating the breakage of rocks into slabs.

This allowed the giant slabs to move on top of each other to form mountains over the next millions of years.

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An explosion of ocean life two billion years ago helped form the mountains on Earth, including the iconic Himalayas (pictured), a new study reveals

An explosion of ocean life two billion years ago helped form the mountains on Earth, including the iconic Himalayas (pictured), a new study reveals

Professor John Parnell, who led the research, said in a statement: 'Mountains are an essential part of the landscape, but big mountain chains only formed half-way through Earth's history, about two billion years ago.

'The geological record for this period includes evidence of an abundance of organic matter in the oceans, which when they died were preserved as graphite in shale.'

While mountain formation is usually associated with the collision of tectonic plates causing huge slabs of rock to be thrust skywards, however the study cites plankton as a key player of creating the natural structures.

The Great Oxidation Event, a time period when the Earth's atmosphere and the shallow ocean first experienced a rise in the amount of oxygen, happened

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