GEOCHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES OF PROTEROZOIC GLACIATION

Extensive Proterozoic glaciations, both in the Neoproterozoic (e.g., Cryogenian) and Paleoproterozoic (e.g., Makganyene/Huronian) have over the past decades become widely recognized as some of the most potentially nonuniformitarian episodes in Earth history. However, the full range of implications of such widespread multi-Myr duration low-latitude continental glaciations for the rest of the Earth system have, in our view, only recently come to be fully appreciated. Here we present a review of these emerging implications, from geochemistry to thermochronology to geophysics, with a particular focus on the possibility of large-scale continental exhumation.