Mystery of Grand Canyon's missing rocks may finally be solved
By Daisy Dobrijevic about 2 hours ago
The ancient supercontinent Rodinia may be responsible.
Cape Royal, Grand Canyon National Park North Rim. (Image credit: Stephen Yelverton Photography via Getty Images)
A mystery lies deep within the Grand Canyon: one billion years' worth of rocks have disappeared. This "Great Unconformity" has rocked the scientific community since it was first described almost 150 years ago.
"Think of the red bluffs and cliffs of the Grand Canyon as Earth's history textbook," Barra Peak, a geologist from the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement. "If you scale down the canyon's rock faces, you can jump back almost 2 billion years into the planet's past. But that textbook is also missing pages: In some areas, more than 1 billion years' worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace."
In a new study, researchers led by Peak identify a likely cause for the missing rocks: the breakup of Earth's ancient supercontinent Rodinia approximately 700 million years ago. The upheaval was so violent it likely washed rocks and sediment into the ocean — one billion year's worth, in the case of the Grand Canyon.
The Great Unconformity was first described by John Wesley Powell during a boat expedition in 1869 along the Colorado River, which carved Arizona's Grand Canyon. It was one of the first well-documented puzzling geologic features in North America, according to researchers.
More:
https://www.space.com/grand-canyon-rock-mystery-rodinia?utm_source=notification
= new reply since forum marked as read
We know the Earth is only 6,000 years old... 
Actually, I liked the post! Geology is an interesting field of study as it steals secrets from our past.
