During the depths of a planetwide ice age, pockets of open ocean might have existed outside the tropics.
A new study bolsters the idea that the global glaciation wasn’t all encompassing. Geochemical evidence from ancient rocks suggests zones of open ocean may have been present north of the Tropic of Cancer, a region that was previously considered too cold to host life during this period. “There’s a habitable zone,” says Shuhai Xiao, a geobiologist at theand co-author of the new work. And it’s “perhaps wider than previously thought.
The geological record indicates Earth has experienced at least two such periods. The most recent one is known as the Marinoan Ice Age, between 654 million and 635 million years ago. Life was limited to the oceans and large creatures had yet to evolve, but fossils show that microscopic eukaryotes such as algae lived before and after the episode. Such organisms require sunlight and open water, Xiao says. “You have to envision some sort of refuge where these algae can survive.
The results jibe with multiple lines of evidence from other studies, which indicate clement conditions at similar latitudes during the ice age, says Carol Dehler, a geologist at Utah State University who wasn’t involved in the work.
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