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.”
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the CNPq (project 444070/2014-1) and PROPE/UNESP for the financial support and Dr. Michael M. McGlue (Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Kentucky) for revising the manuscript. This work has the institutional support of the São Paulo State University (UNESP).
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Warren, L.V., Quaglio, F., Simões, M.G., Freitas, B.T., Assine, M.L., Riccomini, C. (2014). Underneath the Pantanal Wetland: A Deep-Time History of Gondwana Assembly, Climate Change, and the Dawn of Metazoan Life. In: Bergier, I., Assine, M. (eds) Dynamics of the Pantanal Wetland in South America. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2014_326
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