Ancient rocks point to an early start for the Great Unconformity—the biggest gap in Earth's rock record: Two-billion-year-old rocks in China suggest mountain building from Earth's first supercontinent led to a planetwide burst of erosion.

The article discusses new research on the Great Unconformity, a significant gap in the geological record where hundreds of millions of years are missing. A study of ancient rocks in northern China suggests that this gap may have been caused by erosion linked to the formation and breakup of the supercontinent Columbia around 2 billion years ago, rather than being primarily influenced by later events like the Snowball Earth glaciation or the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia. The findings challenge previous theories that connected the Great Unconformity to the Cambrian explosion of marine life, indicating that earlier erosion may have played a more critical role than previously thought. However, some geologists remain skeptical about the new conclusions, calling for more data to validate the claims. [Extracted from the article]