Earth's Early Ocean Was No Scalding Sea

Rocks from the deep past, some 3.5 billion years ago when life first appeared on the planet, were deposited on a deep, cold ocean floor, not in a scalding sea, a new study suggests. "This is the first evidence that over the entire 3.5 billion years, Earth has operated within a temperature range that suits life," said lead study author Maarten de Wit, a professor at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. To take the temperature of Earth's ancient ocean, the resear