Snowball Earth Sci Am
Snowball Earth Sci Am
Snowball Earth Sci Am
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Stage 1 Stage 2
Snowball Earth Prologue Snowball Earth
at Its Coldest
CARBON DIOXIDE
SEA ICE
HOT VOLCANO
SPRING
SAND
DUNES
Breakup of a single landmass 770 million years ago leaves Average global temperatures plummet to –50 degrees Cel-
small continents scattered near the equator. Formerly land- sius shortly after the runaway freeze begins.The oceans ice
locked areas are now closer to oceanic sources of moisture. over to an average depth of more than a kilometer, limited
Increased rainfall scrubs more heat-trapping carbon dioxide only by heat emanating slowly from the earth’s interior.Most
out of the air and erodes continental rocks more quickly. microscopic marine organisms die, but a few cling to life
Consequently, global temperatures fall, and large ice packs around volcanic hot springs. The cold, dry air arrests the
form in the polar oceans. The white ice reflects more solar en- growth of land glaciers, creating vast deserts of windblown
ergy than does darker seawater, driving temperatures even sand.With no rainfall,carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes
lower. This feedback cycle triggers an unstoppable cooling is not removed from the atmosphere.As carbon dioxide ac-
effect that will engulf the planet in ice within a millennium. cumulates,the planet warms and sea ice slowly thins.
Stage 3 Stage 4
Snowball Earth Hothouse Aftermath
as It Thaws
GLACIERS CARBONATE
SEDIMENT
Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase As tropical oceans thaw, seawater evaporates and works
1,000-fold as a result of some 10 million years of normal vol- along with carbon dioxide to produce even more intense
canic activity. The ongoing greenhouse warming effect greenhouse conditions. Surface temperatures soar to more
pushes temperatures to the melting point at the equator. As than 50 degrees Celsius,driving an intense cycle of evapora-
the planet heats up, moisture from sea ice sublimating near tion and rainfall.Torrents of carbonic acid rain erode the rock
the equator refreezes at higher elevations and feeds the debris left in the wake of the retreating glaciers. Swollen
growth of land glaciers. The open water that eventually rivers wash bicarbonate and other ions into the oceans,
forms in the tropics absorbs more solar energy and initiates where they form carbonate sediment. New life-forms— en-
a faster rise in global temperatures.In a matter of centuries,a gendered by prolonged genetic isolation and selective pres-
DAVID FIERSTEIN
brutally hot,wet world will supplant the deep freeze. sure— populate the world as global climate returns to normal.
ES
Platyhelminths
OT
Halverson, we have discovered that the
RY
isotopic variation is consistent over Annelids
KA
EU
many hundreds of kilometers of ex-
IA
Mollusks
ER
posed rock in northern Namibia. x
CT
Priapulids
BA
Carbon dioxide moving into the x Nematodes
oceans from volcanoes is about 1 per-
cent carbon 13; the rest is carbon 12. If Arthropods
ARCHAEA
the formation of carbonate rocks were
HEIDI NOLAND
the only process removing carbon from
0
00
00
00
0
00
00
0
the oceans, then the rock would have the
80
90
70
60
50
2,5
3,0
2,0
3,5
1,5
same fraction of carbon 13 as that
which comes out of volcanoes. But the Time (millions of years ago)
soft tissues of algae and bacteria growing
in seawater also use carbon from the wa-
ter around them, and their photosynthet- prolonged collapse in biological activity. body plans that show up suddenly in
ic machinery prefers carbon 12 to carbon Overall, the snowball earth hypothe- the fossil record during the Cambrian
13. Consequently, the carbon that is left sis explains many extraordinary obser- explosion [see illustration on this page].
to build carbonate rocks in a life-filled vations in the geologic record of the A series of global freeze-fry events
ocean such as we have today has a high- Neoproterozoic world: the carbon iso- would have imposed an environmental
er ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 than topic variations associated with the filter on the evolution of life. All extant
does the carbon fresh out of a volcano. glacial deposits, the paradox of cap car- eukaryotes would thus stem from the
The carbon isotopes in the Neopro- bonates, the evidence for long-lived survivors of the Neoproterozoic calam-
terozoic rocks of Namibia record a dif- glaciers at sea level in the tropics, and the ity. Some measure of the extent of eu-
ferent situation. Just before the glacial associated iron deposits. The strength of karyotic extinctions may be evident in
deposits, the amount of carbon 13 the hypothesis is that it simultaneously universal “trees of life.” Phylogenetic
plummets to levels equivalent to the vol- explains all these salient features, none trees indicate how various groups of or-
canic source, a drop we think records of which had satisfactory independent ganisms evolved from one another,
decreasing biological productivity as ice explanations. What is more, we believe based on their degrees of similarity.
encrusted the oceans at high latitudes this hypothesis sheds light on the early These days biologists commonly draw
and the earth teetered on the edge of a evolution of animal life. these trees by looking at the sequences
runaway freeze. Once the oceans iced of nucleic acids in living organisms.
over completely, productivity would Survival and Redemption of Life Most such trees depict the eukaryotes’
have essentially ceased, but no carbon phylogeny as a delayed radiation crown-
record of this time interval exists be-
cause calcium carbonate could not have
formed in an ice-covered ocean. This
I n the 1960s Martin J. S. Rudwick,
working with Brian Harland, pro-
posed that the climate recovery follow-
ing a long, unbranched stem. The lack of
early branching could mean that most
eukaryotic lineages were “pruned” dur-
drop in carbon 13 persists through the ing a huge Neoproterozoic glaciation ing the snowball earth episodes. The
cap carbonates atop the glacial deposits paved the way for the explosive radia- creatures that survived the glacial epi-
and then gradually rebounds to higher tion of multicellular animal life soon sodes may have taken refuge at hot
levels of carbon 13 several hundred me- thereafter. Eukaryotes— cells that have springs both on the seafloor and near the
ters above, presumably recording the a membrane-bound nucleus and from surface of the ice where photosynthesis
recovery of life at the end of the hot- which all plants and animals descend- could be maintained.
house period. ed— had emerged more than one billion The steep and variable temperature
Abrupt variation in this carbon iso- years earlier, but the most complex or- and chemical gradients endemic to eph-
tope record shows up in carbonate ganisms that had evolved when the first emeral hot springs would preselect for
rocks that represent other times of mass Neoproterozoic glaciation hit were fila- survival in the hellish aftermath to
extinction, but none are as large or as mentous algae and unicellular proto- come. In the face of varying environ-
long-lived. Even the meteorite impact zoa. It has always been a mystery why mental stress, many organisms respond
that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million it took so long for these primitive or- with wholesale genetic alterations. Se-
years ago did not bring about such a ganisms to diversify into the 11 animal vere stress encourages a great degree of
PAUL F. HOFFMAN and DANIEL P. SCHRAG, both at Harvard Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa. Edited by
University, bring complementary expertise to bear on the snowball J. H. Lipps and P. W. Signor. Plenum Publishing, 1992.
earth hypothesis. Hoffman is a field geologist who has long studied an- The Origin of Animal Body Plans. D. Erwin, J. Valentine
cient rocks to unravel the earth’s early history. He led the series of ex- and D. Jablonski in American Scientist, Vol. 85, No. 2, pages
peditions to northwestern Namibia that turned up evidence for Neo- 126–137; March–April 1997.
proterozoic snowball earth events. Schrag is a geochemical oceanogra- A Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth. P. F. Hoffman, A. J.
pher who uses the chemical and isotopic variations of coral reefs, Kaufman, G. P. Halverson and D. P. Schrag in Science, Vol.
deep-sea sediments and carbonate rocks to study climate on timescales 281, pages 1342–1346; August 28, 1998.
ranging from months to millions of years. Together they were able to The First Ice Age. Kristin Leutwyler. Available only at www.
interpret the geologic and geochemical evidence from Namibia and to sciam.com/2000/0100issue/0100hoffman.html on the Scientific
explore the implications of a snowball earth and its aftermath. American Web site.