New mountains did not grow on Earth for a billion years due to the emergence of two supercontinents

In order to learn more about the processes that occurred during the evolution of the Earth, scientists compiled

the first detailed map of how the thickness of the Earth's crust has changed throughout the planet's history.

To do this, they studied about 14 thousand.zircons are crystals of refractory rocks that arise at very high temperatures in the deep layers of the crust, and based on the content of europium and other rare earth elements in them, they determined the thickness of the earth's crust at moments

The birth of Nuna and Rodinia led to unevendistribution of heat on the planet - it was hottest under the continent, in other areas cooling occurred and tectonic shifts stopped, and consequently, the emergence of mountains.

This happened because the Earth's primary oceanlost its main source of phosphorus, molybdenum, as well as other trace elements critical for the existence of photosynthetic microbes and other representatives of ancient life.

Due to the fact that the oxygen level in the atmosphere dropped to almost zero, evolution stopped for a while. 

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