Underneath the pantanal wetland: A deep-time history of gondwana assembly, climate change, and the dawn of metazoan life

Abstract

Underneath the wetlands of the Brazilian Pantanal are hidden key ecological and geological events of the history of our planet. In this chapter we show that Precambrian rocks forming the hills and mountains surrounding the Pantanal floodplains record (a) the cyclic process of supercontinents assembling, (b) the origin of complex life forms on Earth, and (c) the past global climate changes. It further unveiled the most recent geochronological data and paleontological and tectonic discoveries for modeling the evolution of the Pantanal basement rocks. Various questions are also addressed, including the formation time of the Rodinia and Gondwana supercontinents, the triggering factor leading to animal skeleton biomineralization, and the “Snowball Earth Hypothesis.”