Shirtloads of Science

The (Not So) Boring Billion with Prof. Dietmar Müller (478)

June 13 · 28 min · Season 8 · 3.0 GB
0:00-28:14

Streams straight from the publisher. PodNod never proxies or re-hosts episode audio.

In this episode, we speak with Dietmar Müller about the "Boring Billion", a seemingly quiet period in Earth's deep history that may have been crucial for the evolution of complex life. Drawing on his latest research, Müller explains how plate tectonics, passive continental margins, and volcanic outgassing shaped Earth's slow carbon cycle and gradually oxygenated the oceans during the mid-Proterozoic era.

Müller also reflects on how young the science of plate tectonics really is, and discusses the open-source EarthByte tools his team at the University of Sydney has developed to model Earth's ancient geological past. www.earthbyte.org/