'Snowball Earth': Glaciers, ice packs once met at Equator Recent
piddling glaciations were luxury American boffins say they have
discovered evidence that almost the entire world was covered in
sea ice and glaciers at certain points in the remote past,
during so-called "snowball Earth" periods where the polar ice
sheets met at the Equator. It were grim in the old days.
Geologists probing conditions seen in the ancient world have
long considered that there was a cold spell known as the
Sturtian Glaciation about 716 million years ago. However there
has been disagreement in boffinry circles as to just how severe
this glaciation was. Now, researchers from Harvard uni in the
States, funded by the US government, say they have found
ironclad proof that there were glaciers right down on the
Equator at that time. Tropical rocks from the Sturtian, which
have since migrated up to remote northwestern Canada, show
unmistakable signs of having been covered in big ice back then.
"This is the first time that the Sturtian glac