{"id":39180,"date":"2024-02-19T21:05:28","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T21:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent"},"modified":"2024-02-19T21:20:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T21:20:35","slug":"grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent","title":{"rendered":"Grand Canyon\u2019s Time Gap Puzzle May Finally Be Solved Thanks to Ancient Supercontinent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mauritius. <\/strong><\/span>The scientific community has long been puzzled by the so-called \u201cGreat Unconformity\u201d of the Grand Canyon that was first observed by geologist John Wesley Powell in 1869. Something just didn\u2019t make sense about the age gap between the canyon\u2019s rock layers.<\/p>\n

Researchers may have solved the mystery behind the Grand Canyon\u2019s missing rocks by linking it to the Rodinia supercontinent\u2019s breakup some 700 million years ago, according to a new study published by Geology.<\/p>\n

To casual observers, the lower and upper structures of the Grand Canyon are strikingly beautiful, but to geologists they appear like a puzzle of missing time coined \u201cThe Great Unconformity\u201d by John Wesley Powell in 1869.<\/p>\n

Barra Peak, a geologist and graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder, explains that if we treat the Grand Canyon\u2019s cliffs as a textbook of the Earth\u2019s history, it\u2019s clearly missing a lot of pages:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some areas, more than one billion years\u2019 worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace,\u201d the scientist explained.<\/p>\n

Peak and her team embarked on a trip with the ambition to solve the mystery that\u2019s perplexed the scientific world since Powell\u2019s 1869 expedition. During the mission \u2013 that was completed in spring 2021 \u2013 they observed that some 520-million-year-old rocks in the western part of the canyon towards Lake Mead were laying directly on 1.4 to 1.8-billion-year-old stones.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the bottom, you can see very clearly that there are rocks that have been pushed together. Their layers are vertical,\u201d Peak said. \u201cThen there\u2019s a cutoff, and above that you have these beautiful horizontal layers that form the buttes and peaks that you associate with the Grand Canyon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more than a billion years that\u2019s gone,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s also a billion years during an interesting part of Earth\u2019s history where the planet is transitioning from an older setting to the modern Earth we know today.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what could have possibly happened to these missing rocks?<\/p>\n

Peak\u2019s team employed so-called thermochronology to track the heat history in the analysed stones. They eventually came to the conclusion that the western and eastern parts of the Grand Canyon may have encountered different geological processes roughly 700 million years ago \u2013 the same time the Rodinia supercontinent was breaking up.<\/p>\n

A violent disintegration of the gigantic landmass probably tore the western and eastern halves of the Grand Canyon in different ways, while pulling apart the earth around it so that some rocks ended up in the ocean, they concluded. The ancient Rodinia, therefore, is probably to blame for this gap in time.<\/p>\n

The team is now exploring other sites of the Great Unconformity in North America to see if these findings can help to solve other puzzles linked to the \u201cmissing rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Mauritius<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mauritius. The scientific community has long been puzzled by the so-called \u201cGreat Unconformity\u201d of the Grand Canyon that was first observed by geologist John Wesley Powell in 1869. Something just didn\u2019t make sense about the age gap between the canyon\u2019s rock layers. Researchers may have solved the mystery behind the Grand Canyon\u2019s missing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":39179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[233,245,241],"class_list":["post-39180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mauritius","tag-mauritius"],"yoast_head":"\nGrand Canyon\u2019s Time Gap Puzzle May Finally Be Solved Thanks to Ancient Supercontinent - Mauritius<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The scientific community has long been puzzled by the so-called \u201cGreat Unconformity\u201d of the Grand Canyon that was first ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grand Canyon\u2019s Time Gap Puzzle May Finally Be Solved Thanks to Ancient Supercontinent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The scientific community has long been puzzled by the so-called \u201cGreat Unconformity\u201d of the Grand Canyon that was first ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mauritius\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-02-19T21:05:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-02-19T21:20:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2024\/02\/sm_1708364956.080308.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Grand Canyon\u2019s Time Gap Puzzle May Finally Be Solved Thanks to Ancient Supercontinent\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-02-19T21:05:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-02-19T21:20:35+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\"},\"wordCount\":489,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2024\/02\/sm_1708364956.080308.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mauritius\",\"Mauritius\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/grand-canyons-time-gap-puzzle-may-finally-be-solved-thanks-to-ancient-supercontinent\",\"name\":\"Grand Canyon\u2019s Time Gap Puzzle May Finally Be Solved Thanks to Ancient Supercontinent - 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