{"id":908551,"date":"2026-09-25T01:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908551\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T01:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:48:15","slug":"scientists-say-antarcticas-lost-supermountains-may-have-fueled-an-explosion-of-life-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/908551\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say Antarctica’s Lost ‘Supermountains’ May Have Fueled an Explosion of Life on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cambrian explosion brought exactly that to Earth\u2014an \u201cexplosion\u201d of life that kickstarted the evolution of animals as we know them. Scientists have come up with a myriad of theories to explain this phenomenon, such as a recent paper on a literal sh*t-ton of poop<\/a>. And here\u2019s now another odd idea: gigantic Antarctic mountains that eroded millions of years ago.<\/p>\n

To be exact, a new analysis<\/a> of zircon particles from Antarctica strongly suggests that the barren lands once hosted an enormous mountain range. As these ancient mountains eroded over the years, they would have shed nutrients that fed organisms at the very bottom of the food chain. Their photosynthesis sparked a huge leap in atmospheric oxygen, which was good news for more complex organisms\u2014and the rest is history. Bei Chen and Ian Campbell, both Earth scientists at the Australian National University, published their findings in a recent paper for Earth and Planetary Science Letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf rapid advances in evolution occur in response to favorable environmental change,\u201d they wrote in the paper, \u201cthe dramatic evolutionary changes that occurred during the Cambrian should be matched by an environmental change of comparable importance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving literal mountains <\/p>\n

And that dramatic environmental change was the erosion of Antarctica\u2019s lost mountains, the team argued. For the study, the researchers collected 1,712 zircon grains from 12 different locations in Antarctica. Then, they dated the samples using uranium-lead <\/a>dating, which helps determine the precise crystallization age of zircon. From these measurements, the team picked out four peaks in the distribution for the zircon particles\u2019 age.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, the highest peak, between 650 and 450 million years ago, matched nicely with the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana. According to the paper, the assembly of the supercontinent led to the collision of continent-sized pieces. When the conditions were right, these collisions would have produced giant mountain ranges, similar to how the Himalayas were formed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rise of supermountains <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why the team believes the zircons point to a lost mountain range. First of all, previous research<\/a> has shown that central Australia and the Antarctic section of Gondwana would have been moving rapidly enough toward each other to create that much force. Second, the geological deposits that the team studied share key traits with those traced back to Himalayan-style mountains, the researchers noted in the paper.<\/p>\n

\"ReconstructionReconstruction of Gondwana highlighting core blocks, interior orogens and peripheral orogens. \u00a9 Campbell et al., 2026 <\/p>\n

The resulting mountains would have been much larger than those we see today, they added, so it may be fitting to call these extinct features a \u201csupermountain.\u201d And if true, the disappearance of these supposed supermountains has significant implications for the Cambrian explosion. For one, the mountains would have included \u201cessential nutrients for life,\u201d such as phosphorus, iron, and carbonate molecules.<\/p>\n

The miracle of life <\/p>\n

As the team noted in the paper, this account is as \u201cfeasible\u201d as any other theory on the Cambrian explosion, insofar as we\u2019re aware that Earth\u2019s systems are closely intertwined. That is, the right \u201canswer\u201d is likely a combination of various factors that provided the right conditions for the evolution of life. And these lost mountains may as well have been one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unlikely to be a coincidence that Earth\u2019s most dramatic period of evolution correlates with the planet\u2019s most important period of mountain building: the formation and erosion of the Gondwana Supermountains,\u201d the researchers concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cambrian explosion brought exactly that to Earth\u2014an \u201cexplosion\u201d of life that kickstarted the evolution of animals as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15697,49,90752,48,7820,66],"class_list":["post-908551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-antarctica","tag-ca","tag-cambrian-explosion","tag-canada","tag-evolution","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}