From Global Glaciation to Snowball Earth: Recent Researches on the Neoproterozoic Glaciation Events

The glacial rocks of Neoproterozoic are quite different from those of the Phanerozoic and have attracted attention of many outstanding geoscientists of different fields. In the recent decades, especially in recent years, the 'Snowball Earth' hypothesis aroused even more interests on this topic. The Neoproterozoic glacial environments and the causes of the glaciations have now become a hot topic in earth science. The recent researches are characterized by the high comprehensiveness, which is related to studies on litho , hydro , atmo , and the biosphere, and even to the astronomy. Recent studies are mainly focused on the low altitude and low latitude glaciation of the Neoproterozoic, the effect of the breakup of supercontinent Rodinia, the counter relation between the icehouse and the warmhouse effects, the possibility of the complete covering of the oceans by kilometer thick ice, causes of the formation of the cap carbonates, environmental significance of carbon, sulfur, and strontium isotopes, formation of ironstone within the glacial deposition, ages of the Neoproterozoic ice, numerical simulation of the snowball earth theory, and the relationships between the variation of glacial environments and the Cambrian bio radiation. The present researches are aimed to a large extent to reveal the characteristics of the glacial environments, and the isotope geochemical and geochemical methods for extracting important environmental information are widely used. However, the traditional studies on paleogeomagnetism and geochronology remain crucial in the reconstruction of the paleo environments. The stratigraphy of the Nanhua Period in South China are attracting attention of more and more geoscientists all over the world and become an important region for the investigation of relation ship between the Neoproterozoic glaciation and the Cambrian Bio radiation.