{"id":207924,"date":"2025-03-06T05:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T11:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/time-will-tell-geoscientists-develop-tool-to-chronicle-unexplained-gaps-in-the-rock-record"},"modified":"2025-03-06T05:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T11:20:16","slug":"time-will-tell-geoscientists-develop-tool-to-chronicle-unexplained-gaps-in-the-rock-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/time-will-tell-geoscientists-develop-tool-to-chronicle-unexplained-gaps-in-the-rock-record","title":{"rendered":"Time will tell: Geoscientists develop tool to chronicle unexplained gaps in the rock record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/time-will-tell-geoscientists-develop-tool-to-chronicle-unexplained-gaps-in-the-rock-record3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Iron oxide minerals are found in rocks around the globe. Some are magnetic, and some of them rust\u2014especially when exposed to water and oxygen. These characteristics provide clues about the history of these minerals.<\/p>\n<p>Utah State University geoscientists describe a new forensic tool for determining the timing of geochemical oxidation reactions in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/iron+oxide\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">iron-oxide<\/a> minerals occurring in the Earth\u2019s crust, which could shed light on how and when large, unexplained gaps in the rock record\u2014known as \u201cunconformities\u201d\u2014developed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA challenge for geoscientists is accurately constraining when rocks resided in the near-surface environment,\u201d says Alexis Ault, associate professor in USU\u2019s Department of Geosciences. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky to pinpoint the timing of such processes, because the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/geologic+evidence\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">geologic evidence<\/a> has often been erased.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iron oxide minerals are found in rocks around the globe. Some are magnetic, and some of them rust\u2014especially when exposed to water and oxygen. These characteristics provide clues about the history of these minerals. Utah State University geoscientists describe a new forensic tool for determining the timing of geochemical oxidation reactions in iron-oxide minerals occurring [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}