Drilling Into Ancient Rock to Learn About Earth’s Past

Phumelele Mashele, Christoph Heubeck
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Abstract

Geologists are curious to learn what the Earth was like when the planet was young. We want to know about temperature, beaches, soils, climate, rivers, meteorite impacts, and volcanic activity because these factors determined how and where early life could exist. Only the oldest sedimentary rocks have this information, but these are usually covered by younger rocks. Old sedimentary rocks that still “tell a good story” about the history of the Earth are rare. We studied some of these. They are an unimaginable 3.2 billion years old and are found in the Makhonjwa Mountains near South Africa’s border with Eswatini. We had to drill into the Earth to get to them because the surface is covered by forest and grassland. Sedimentary rock layers in these mountains do not lie flat anymore but are vertical, and sometimes even flipped over. To drill through as many layers as possible, we had to drill sideways!
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钻进古老岩石了解地球的过去
地质学家对地球年轻时的样子充满好奇。我们想了解温度、海滩、土壤、气候、河流、陨石撞击和火山活动,因为这些因素决定了早期生命的存在方式和地点。只有最古老的沉积岩才有这些信息,但这些沉积岩通常被较年轻的岩石所覆盖。仍在 "讲述 "地球历史的古老沉积岩非常罕见。我们研究了其中一些。它们的年龄达到了令人难以想象的 32 亿年,发现于南非与埃斯瓦提尼交界处附近的马孔吉瓦山脉。由于地表被森林和草原覆盖,我们不得不钻入地下才能找到它们。这些山区的沉积岩层不再是平的,而是垂直的,有时甚至是翻转的。为了钻透尽可能多的岩层,我们必须侧着钻!
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