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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00:00Our planet has evolved a lot over the years, going from a volcanic molten surface when
00:08it was first formed to the life-preserving bubble in space it is today.
00:12So there are a lot of questions about how and when certain processes first began, and
00:16experts say they may have just found where the first ever earthquake took place.
00:20Researchers first discovered an extremely old bit of rock in the Barberton Greenstone
00:24Belt in South Africa, a rock that used to be part of Earth's ancient seafloor 3.3 billion
00:29years ago.
00:30The Barberton Greenstone Belt has long been difficult for geologists to understand historically
00:35because of the different ways each type of mineral that resides there behaves over time.
00:39However, after finding that piece of ancient subsurface rock, scientists noticed the area
00:43looked a whole lot like underwater landslides just off the coast of New Zealand.
00:47The researchers now posit that the Barberton Greenstone Belt is a combination of both subsurface
00:52and shallow subsurface landslides of epic proportion, which then mixed with others that
00:57had built up on the seafloor over time.
00:59And they say given how old that bit of rock they found is, it means our planet likely
01:03started having earthquakes much earlier than previously thought.
01:07Researchers are now saying this could help them decipher mysteries elsewhere, meaning
01:10this find is a sort of geological Rosetta Stone, which could lead to more geological
01:15discoveries.