At https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lost-mega-escarpment-ancient-usa.html …. and the full paper at https://doi.org/10.1130/g55133.1 … we have the idea a colossal cliff, or escarpment, that stretched hundreds of miles across ancient North America that may have exposed the heart of the Grand Canyon before it was carved out by the Colorado river. Assuming it was carved out by the Colorado river in the first instance. The puzzle here is that we have the Great Unconformity – large areas of conventional geological strata are missing. Is this an attempt to explain what seems to geologists a puzzling matter. What if those missing layers were formed during a catastrophe? Did the Grand Canyon miss out on some of the action?
The Grand Canyon has a geological record spanning 2 billion years of layer cake geology – but a lot of the rock record is thought to be missing. In other words, parts of the geological column do not exist in the Grand Canyon formation.
At https://phys.org/news/2026-08-layered-india-potential-microbial-life.html … a folded carbon rich chert layer in eastern India contained thin layers of silica and carbonaceous material. This may be the remains of microbial life it has been suggested. Or a microbial mat feature. An interesting idea. The chert layer has been dated 3,497 million years ago. Almost as old as the Earth itself.
At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/08/mauritia-ancient-alien-continent-indian-ocean/ … even more interesting for UK readers as both Mauritius and the Chagos Islands are purportedly part of this lost continent. Mauritia is a lost continent. Too old to be Lemuria of Blavatsky but an interesting idea nevertheless which may have a geological solution. Mauritius itself has a volcanic origin only going back around 9 million years, it is thought. The mystery here is what lies behind the idea of a lost continent – the discovery of grains of sand on the fabulours beaches of the island archipelago that are thought to date back between 600 million and 2 billion years ago. How did they get there? The remnants of the lost continent, which includes the Chagos Islands and Madagascar, perhaps, and the Seychelles, perhaps – as well as submarine pieces that have sunk beneath the waves. It is speculated that Mauritania is buried under layers of newer volcanic rock created as the Indian Ocean expanded. But why did it expand? This is all down to Plate Tectonics, the ocean expanding as land sinks beneath another piece of land. However, that is mainstream thinking. There is another geological idea that keeps popping up and then being shut down again and that is the idea of an expanding Earth. The universe is expanding so why not the planets and star formations? In this scenario the Chagos, Mauritius, Madagascar, and other land forms are all pieces of continent left behind as the earth expanded and the oceans widened. Mainstream even admit the Indian Ocean has expanded. This may be as a result of catastrophic events on a global scale – a sort of side effect. Sometimes rapid and sometimes meagre. Earth expansion may have begun as early as the Cambrian – or even earlier. It wasn’t just a feature of the dinosaur and reptile ages. Where would that leave Pangaea?
I am just pointing out that there is an alternative explanation without advocating for an expanding earth scenario. However, the idea is not a lot different to the nitty gritty of Plate Tectonics theory. However, here we have another quandary as the sand grains were dated via zircon crystals. It is the currently fashionable way to date ancient rocks and relies on uranium lead [U-Pb] dating methodology. Hence, it is a rather newish process and may not have ironed out all the creases in the underlying theory behind it. We shall just have to wait and see.