In a Finnish outcrop nestled between some of Northern Europe’s oldest mountains, researchers have found traces of a previously hidden part of Earth’s crust that points more than three billion years back in time and north towards Greenland.
These traces were found in the mineral zircon, which after chemical analyses, indicated to researchers from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management that the “foundation” upon which Denmark and Scandinavia rest, was probably ‘born’ from Greenland approximately 3.75 billion years ago.
“The zircon crystals we found in river sand and rocks from Finland have signatures that point towards them being much older than anything ever found in Scandinavia, while matching the age of Greenlandic rock samples. At the same time, the results of three independent isotope analyses confirm that Scandinavia’s bedrock was most likely linked to Greenland,” says Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management researcher Andreas Petersson.
“Earth was probably a watery planet, like in the movie Waterworld, but without any oxygen in the atmosphere and without emergent crust. But, because that’s so far back in time, we can’t really be sure about what it actually looked like,” says Tod Waight.
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