Neoproterozoic glacial origin of the Great Unconformity

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Abstract

The Great Unconformity, a profound gap in Earth’s stratigraphic record often evident below the base of the Cambrian system, has remained among the most enigmatic field observations in Earth science for over a century. While long associated directly or indirectly with the occurrence of the earliest complex animal fossils, a conclusive explanation for the formation and global extent of the Great Unconformity has remained elusive. Here we show that the Great Unconformity is associated with a set of large global oxygen and hafnium isotope excursions in magmatic zircon that suggest a late Neoproterozoic crustal erosion and sediment subduction event of unprecedented scale. These excursions, the Great Unconformity, preservational irregularities in the terrestrial bolide impact record, and the first-order pattern of Phanerozoic sedimentation can together be explained by spatially heterogeneous Neoproterozoic glacial erosion totaling a global average of 3–5 vertical kilometers, along with the subsequent thermal and isostatic consequences of this erosion for global continental freeboard.

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Brenhin Keller, C., Husson, J. M., Mitchell, R. N., Bottke, W. F., Gernon, T. M., Boehnke, P., … Peters, S. E. (2019). Neoproterozoic glacial origin of the Great Unconformity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(4), 1136–1145. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804350116

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