Geologists show that Tasmania and the Grand Canyon were connected on the old supercontinent

The Grand Canyon of Arizona and the Australian island of Tasmania are distant about 8000 miles, flying from the bird. But in recent years, geologists have noticed that some of the oldest rocks in Tasmania seem to be able to be extracted from the Grand Canyon.

More than a billion years ago, these two disparate sites were part of the same rock formation in the long-vanished Rodinia supercontinent, according to a study published this month in Geology.

Led by Jacob Mulder, a researcher at Melbourne's Monash University, this study compares the chemical composition and geological age of the Unkar group rocks at the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Cape group in Tasmania. Both sites date back to the end of the Mesoproterozoic, about 1.1 billion years ago, and contain corresponding readings of hafnium isotopes.

"We have concluded that even though it is now on the opposite side of the planet, Tasmania must have been attached to the western United States," Mulder said. New scientist .

Although the name is not known as Pangea, a gigantic landmass that existed during the Triassic Period, Rodinia was an important step in the continental evolution of the Earth.

Formed from fragments of an even older supercontinent called Columbia, Rodinia would have been a barren landscape as terrestrial life had not yet evolved. The continent broke up about 800 million years ago, in part because of large upwellings in the melted mantle of the Earth.

Read more: Researchers discover the oldest evidence of animals on Earth

Scientists have been trying to reconstruct Rodinia's assemblage for years, but it's like trying to solve a puzzle that disassembles and reassembles in different forms. That's why the identification of two essential puzzle pieces – such as the Unkar group (in the Grand Canyon) and the upper group of Rocky Cape (in Tasmania) – is so crucial. The study links not only Arizona and Tasmania across time and space, but is a further step in understanding how our modern world has evolved from this supercontinent.

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