Geologists determine early Earth was a 'water world' by studying exposed ocean crust

Geologists -- including Iowa State's Benjamin Johnson -- studied exposed, 3.2-billion-year-old ocean crust in Australia and used that rock data to build a quantitative, inverse model of ancient seawater. The model indicates the early Earth could have been a 'water world' with submerged continents. The findings have just been published online by the journal Nature Geoscience.