Scientists discover part of the Grand Canyon in Australia

A team of researchers found evidence that, in the remote past, the territories of Australia and the United States would have been linked together, forming part of a single supercontinent.

Australian research has confirmed that although the island of Tasmania (Australia) and the Grand Canyon of Arizona (USA) are thousands of miles away, there is a geological connection between these two regions.

As the Phys.org portal summarizes, this happened during the existence of the supercontinent Rodinia, 1.1 billion years ago, whose configuration has been the subject of debate in the scientific world for more than two decades.

The team led by researcher Jacob Mulder found a striking resemblance between the sedimentary rocks of the Rocky Cape Group of Tasmania and those of the Unkar Group (located in the Grand Canyon in the southwestern United States).

Tasmanian rocks confused scientists because they "did not resemble" their Australian neighbors of the Mesoproterozoic period, Mulder said. Therefore, the team decided to analyze the zirconium mineral grains, which constitute a small proportion of them, to discover their origin.

As a result, the researchers stated that "Grand Canyon rocks are not only similar to Tasmanian rocks and are of the same age," as the "detrital zircons in the sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon also share the same geochemical structure as the zircons in the sequences Mesoproterozoic Tasmania, "said the study's author, published in the journal Geology.

"Together, these different lines of evidence support the interpretation that the Tasmanian sedimentary rocks were part of the same system of Mesoproterozoic basins that are now displayed in the Grand Canyon," Mulder confirmed.

"We concluded that although it is now on the opposite side of the planet, Tasmania must have been linked to the western United States in the Mesoproterozoic," he added.

According to the scientist, the study on the configuration of the supercontinent is important to "understand the secrets of Rodinia, which has remained a mystery for decades."