Life may have survived 'Snowball Earth' in ocean pockets (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Neil Bowdler
Science reporter, BBC News

Life may have survived a cataclysmic global freeze some 700 million years ago in pockets of open ocean.

Researchers claim to have found evidence in Australia that turbulent seas still raged during the period, where microorganisms may have clung on for life.

Conditions on what is dubbed "Snowball Earth" were so harsh that most life is thought to have perished.

Details are published in the journal Geology.

The researchers in Britain and Australia claim to have found deposits in the remote Flinders Ranges in South Australia which bare {sic} the unmistakable mark of turbulent oceans.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11992299




This was well before the "Cambrian Explosion" of ca. 530 MYA ... not sure whether much more than "basic organisms" were even present. Even the Ediacaran fauna came later.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. If the Wikipedia article is accurate

(I know, stop laughing), then this is the first of 2 possible 'Snowball Earth' periods; they have found sponges in the second - the Marinoan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenian
http://www.physorg.com/news201273825.html