Scientists have identified the submerged remnants of a giant lost supercontinent that played a pivotal role in the explosion of complex life more than 500 million years ago, reports a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances.
By gathering over 25,000 rocks from ancient continental fragments, a team reconstructed the past contours of Gondwana, a massive landmass that formed between 800 and 500 million years ago in the Southern Hemisphere. Gondwana’s true size has long been a matter of contentious debate, but it is generally thought to have taken up two-thirds of Earth’s land at the time, falling short of “supercontinent” status.
Now, scientists led by Tao Wang, a professor of geoscience at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, have revealed that Gondwana accounted for roughly 80 percent of Earth’s landmass between 550 and 500 million years ago, confirming that it was a supercontinent.
The formation of this colossal realm helped fuel the Cambrian explosion, a rapid proliferation of complex life that began about 538 million years ago, establishing a fundamental link between “deep-Earth processes” and “the most profound expansion of life in Earth history,” according to the new study.
