Meghalayan Age: How Scientists Traced A New Age In The History Of Earth From Caves In India

London: Geologists have ranked the last 4,200 years as a separate Earth Age – "the Meghalayan era" – whose beginning was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilizations around the world.

A stalagmite showing the beginning of the age

The new clbadification came after stalagmites on the The floors of Meghalaya state caves, in northeastern India , have been discovered as a significant proof of the latest distinction, reported Wednesday the BBC.

The existence of 4.6 billion years is divided into time slices. Each slice corresponded to significant events – such as the collapse of continents, dramatic changes in climate, and even the emergence of particular types of animals and plants.

The present day in which we live calls itself the Holocene epoch, which reflects all that has happened in the last 11,700 years – since a dramatic warming has expelled us of the last ice age, reported the BBC.

But the Holocene itself can be subdivided, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy

The ICS is the official guardian of geological time and proposes three stages to designate the upper, intermediate and inferior of the time. They record all the major climatic events

4,200
years before the beginning of the Meghalayan period

The Meghalayan, the youngest scene, extends from 4 200 to 1950. It began with a destructive drought, the effects of which lasted two centuries and seriously disturbed civilizations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Mediterranean. Yangtze River Valley, adds the BBC report. To gain clbadification, a geological time slice must generally reflect something whose effects are global in scope and badociated with a type of rock or sediment that is clear and unambiguous.

For the famous frontier there are 66 million years pbading from Cretaceous to Tertiary, this "golden tip" is represented by traces in the sediments of the element iridium. This has been spread across the planet in the debris scattered by the asteroid that has erased the dinosaurs.

For the Meghalayan, the spur is embodied in specific chemical signatures, the most beautiful example of which can be seen in the layers of stalagmites on the cave floors in the state of Meghalaya, north-east. is from India.

To gain the clbadification, a geological time slice must reflect something whose effects have an overall extent and be badociated with a type of rock.

It was probably triggered by changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation, according to the ICS

. The Meghalayan era is unique among the many intervals of the geological time scale. Its debut coincides with a global cultural event produced by a global climate event, said Stanley Finney, professor at Long Beach State University and secretary general of the International Union of Geological Sciences (UISG). ), which has ratified the ICS proposal.

The middle phase of the Holocene will be called Northgrippian and will extend from 8,300 years to the beginning of the Meghalayan. The beginning of this age was an abrupt cooling, attributed to large volumes of fresh water from melting glaciers in Canada that flow into the North Atlantic and disrupt ocean currents.

The earliest phase of the Holocene – the release of the Ice Age – will be known as the Greenlandian

The International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the famous diagram depicting the calendar for the year. Earth's history, will be updated, the BBC reported.