Downunder 'source of life'

MELBOURNE - Australian researchers believe they have discovered evidence an 8000km-long "super-mountain range" as high as the Himalayas was the source of life on Earth.

The range spanned the prehistoric super-continent Gondwana, which later fragmented to form present-day Australia, Africa, Antarctica, New Zealand, South America and Arabia, Dr Rick Squire, of Melbourne's Monash University School of Geosciences, said yesterday.

Dr Squire was studying the formation of a gold deposit at the Stawell mine in western Victoria with three other researchers when the group made their discovery.

The four were examining what qualities in the region's sandstone helped create the gold deposit.

"The super-mountain range formed near the equator at a time when there was no vegetation and there was really high rainfall and really high erosion," Dr Squire said.

"Huge rivers drained all of this sand and mud into the oceans and deposited it on the edges of Gondwana. This changed the ocean chemistry.

"We are arguing this provided a big flux in nutrients that helped trigger big algal blooms that were the source of food that led to this radical growth in animal life."

The findings have been published in the latest issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

- AAP