Category Archives: past worlds

Rivers might not need plants to meander

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Chris Rowan

Here’s a new study that, if true, this would have some big implications for the nature of the sedimentary record for a lot of Earth History. Research from 1.2 billion year-old sediments in Scotland adds the oldest evidence yet against … Continue reading →

Categories: geology, geomorphology, past worlds

Has Earth’s mantle always worked like it does today?

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Chris Rowan

This seems to be the latest round in the eternal battle between the geophysics data which strongly suggests whole mantle convection (and for quite some time, if ideas about the origin of all the weird junk at the core-mantle boundary … Continue reading →

Categories: deep time, geochemistry, geology, geophysics, past worlds

A new recipe for Large Igneous Provinces: just add BIF, then wait a couple of hundred million years

Posted on May 26, 2023 by Chris Rowan

Here’s a new paper that proposes the biggest of big ideas: a 240 million year causal chain that runs from the Earth’s surface, to the core mantle boundary, and back again! Here’s how it supposedly goes: 1. Banded iron deposits … Continue reading →

Categories: deep time, geology, past worlds, volcanoes

Oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere may not have required a trigger event after all

Posted on December 14, 2019 by Chris Rowan

In Earth history, there have been 3 abrupt jumps in atmospheric oxygen. A evolutionary or tectonic trigger is usually invoked, but a new study just published in Science suggests all you need is gradual oxidation of earth’s surface plus feedbacks … Continue reading →

Categories: Archean, climate science, deep time, geochemistry, geology, Palaeozoic, past worlds, Proterozoic, society

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again: an introduction to How the Earth Works

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Chris Rowan

For a couple of years now, I’ve been telling a story at the beginning of the introductory geology course I teach, called How the Earth Works. I like to think it gives a flavour of the kinds of stories you can tell about the Earth, if you know how to look: stories of how the world slowly remakes itself over hundreds of millions of years, of how the very high was once the very low, and will be again. This is that story. Continue reading →