We all know mud as that icky, brown clump of soil that’s difficult to remove from our footwear or clothes. Alternatively, some refer to mud as wet soil. Geologists define mud as tiny particles that stick together when wet. For the experts, mud isn’t just composed of soil, as broken down rocks are also considered mud. Experts are now researching how mud was initially formed, and how did plant life increase the production of mud, as Knowable Magazine details:
Before plants arrived on land, mud was around — it was just mostly sent to the seafloor by rivers. Once plants showed up, they not only held sediments in place but their roots also physically broke down rock and released chemicals that further crumbled it. In these ways, plants accelerated what geologists refer to as the “continental mud factory.”
Before plants, rivers would have stripped continents of silt and clay — key constituents of mud — and sent these sediments to the seafloor. This would have left continents full of barren rock, and seas with smothered fish.
Once plants arrived on land, things began to change. Mud clung to vegetation along riverbanks and stuck around rather than shuttling straight to the seafloor. Davies, now at the UK’s University of Cambridge, and his colleagues have found that the expansion of land plants between about 458 million and 359 million years ago coincides with a more than tenfold increase in mud on land — and a significant shift in the ways that rivers flowed. The arrival of first plants and then mud “fundamentally changed the way the world operates,” he says.
Image via Knowable Magazine
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mud eh
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