Chinese geologists plan to extract a 10-km-deep core sample to study the Cretaceous period
SEP 09, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024658
Nature : Chinese geologists are preparing to drill 10 km deep into the Songliao plain in northeastern China. Their goal is to extract a core sample, which they hope will manifest evidence of one of the most climatically and geologically turbulent periods in Earth’s past: the Cretaceous. In her report about the drilling project, Nature‘s Jane Qiu describes the period:
Beginning about 145 million years ago, the Cretaceous was the heyday of the dinosaurs. It was a time of climatic extremes, when global temperatures exceeded even the most alarming forecasts for the greenhouse world of 2100, and sea levels were up to 250 metres higher than today, covering about one-third of the current landmass. It was also a period of great geological and biological unrest, associated with frequent volcanic eruptions, the formation of major mountain ranges and ocean oxygen depletion. And it ended in spectacular style, with the global catastrophe that saw off dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, an event known as the Cretaceous/Palaeogene (K/Pg) extinction.
The Songliao plain was formed before the Cretaceous began from the broad, flat gap that resulted when two tectonic plates separated. During the Cretaceous, the plain was covered by lakes, whose sediments, now compressed into bedrock, are expected to harbor the geological evidence.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
