By: Elaine Li

Scientists dug a 1,268-meter hole to retrieve rocks from the mantle which makes up 80% of Earth’s volume and is right above the core of Earth. The sample is more than one kilometer long and is from the biggest hole ever dug.

Scientists got the rocks from Atlantis Massif, an underwater mountain where mantle rocks are exposed. The hole the scientists drilled in the Atlantic Massif is 1000 meters deeper than the previous hole.
The rocks could help explain the importance of the mantle, and what happened in the early life of Earth. The rocks’ time is closer to the early rocks on earth rather than the rocks that make up the continents.

“When we recovered the rocks, it was a major achievement in the history of the Earth sciences, but, more than that, its value is in what the cores of mantle rocks could tell us about the makeup and evolution of our planet,” said Professor Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences who is the lead author on the new study.

“Our study begins to look at the composition of the mantle by documenting the mineralogy of the recovered rocks, as well as their chemical makeup.”

These rocks are a big step to discovering what the mantle did in Earth’s early life and will help scientists make more discoveries.