sj_zero on Nostr: The rock is produced by living things. Something creates some energy through ...

The rock is produced by living things. Something creates some energy through photosynthesis, and either it creates a carbonate shell like coccolithophores or Coralline algaes, or ends up getting eaten by something else that goes up the food chain to feed something like a clam or a snail. What happens is those creatures live, grow, then die, and when they die their shells fall to the bottom of the sea and compact together, and these tiny creatures dying adds up over geological timeframes.

I ended up on a geological history of earth kick a few years ago, and stuff like this ended up being incredibly interesting because some really big things end up almost irrelevant to the geological record, but some really small things like microorganisms end up being immensely important.