• Question: can you answer why we as humans are here through studying the rocks on earth?

    Asked by Ryan Gunning to Jane on 9 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Jane MacArthur

      Jane MacArthur answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      Studying the rocks on Earth enables us to learn a great deal about the conditions, temperature, weather and environment on Earth over the last 4.5 billion years. The very oldest known minerals, zircons, date back 4.4 billion years and the first rocks deposited by water are 3.8 billion years, a similar time to when bacteria first developed. Biologists can take our information and limits of what the temperatures and pressures could have been, to understand the evolution of how single celled organisms became multi cellular and eventually mammals and life we know today.
      I think humans are here as a result of a great many events and processes, some of which we are beginning to understand and some of which may be very rare.

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