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Reading Skills KNOWN INFORMATION KNOWN INFORMATION Words preview Clue Climate Fossil Organism Scarce Bacteria In this regard Evidence Sedimentary Sediment Glacier Glacial Posit Deposit Distinctive Layer Corresponding Episode Benign Page 273 Paragraph 1 There are only a few clues in the rock record about climate in the Proterozoic eon. Much of our information about climate in the more recent periods of geologic history comes from the fossil record, because we have a reasonably good understanding of the types of environment in which many fossil organisms flourished. Much of our information about climate in the more recent periods of geologic history comes from the fossil record, because we have a reasonably good understanding of the types of environment in which many fossil organisms flourished. The scarce fossils of the Proterozoic, mostly single-celled bacteria, provide little evidence in this regard. However, the rocks themselves do include the earliest evidence for glaciation, probably a global ice age. Paragraph 2 The inference that some types of sedimentary rocks are the result of glacial activity is based on the principle of uniformitarianism, which posits that natural processes now at work on and within the Earth operated in the same manner in the distant past. The deposits associated with present-day glaciers have been well studied, and some of their characteristics are quite distinctive. In 2.3-billion-year-old rocks in Canada near Lake Huron (dating from the early part of the Proterozoic age), there are thin laminae of fine-grained sediments that resemble varves, the annual layers of sediment deposited in glacial lakes. Typically, present-day varves show two-layered annual cycle, one layer corresponding to the rapid ice melting and sediment transport of the summer season, and the other, finer-grained, layer corresponding to slower winter deposition. Although it is not easy to discern such details in the Proterozoic examples, they are almost cer