Our planet has evolved a lot over the years, going from volcanic molten surface when it was first formed to the life preserving bubble in space it is today. So there are a lot of questions about how and when certain processes first began and experts say they may have just found where the first ever earthquake took place.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Our planet has evolved a lot over the years,
00:06 going from a volcanic molten surface when it was first
00:08 formed to the life-preserving bubble in space it is today.
00:11 So there are a lot of questions about how and when
00:14 certain processes first began.
00:16 And experts say they may have just
00:17 found where the first ever earthquake took place.
00:20 Researchers first discovered an extremely old bit of rock
00:23 in the Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa,
00:25 a rock that used to be part of Earth's ancient seafloor 3.3
00:29 billion years ago.
00:30 The Barberton Greenstone Belt has long
00:32 been difficult for geologists to understand historically
00:35 because of the different ways each type of mineral that
00:37 resides there behaves over time.
00:39 However, after finding that piece of ancient subsurface
00:42 rock, scientists noticed the area
00:43 looked a whole lot like underwater landslides just
00:46 off the coast of New Zealand.
00:47 The researchers now posit that the Barberton Greenstone Belt
00:50 is a combination of both subsurface
00:52 and shallow subsurface landslides of epic proportion,
00:55 which then mix with others that had built up
00:58 on the seafloor over time.
00:59 And they say given how old that bit of rock they found is,
01:02 it means our planet likely started
01:03 having earthquakes much earlier than previously thought.
01:06 Researchers are now saying this could help them decipher
01:09 mysteries elsewhere, meaning this find
01:11 is a sort of geological Rosetta Stone, which could lead
01:14 to more geological discoveries.
01:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:20 (upbeat music)