Facebook Post Is Inaccurate Portrayal

A recent Facebook post (I believe on one of Springdale’s community facebook pages) claims that Zion’s peaks are rising a few inches each year due to tectonic uplift. It describes Earth’s history beginning with Pangea, suggesting that when the supercontinent broke apart, deep volcanic activity brought large quantities of diamonds to the surface, where they later decompressed into carbon over long periods. It further asserts that deep-earth bacteria convert carbon-based gases into oil that later migrates upward into underground cavities. The text also compared this to ocean processes, stating that plankton create oil for buoyancy and release most of Earth’s oxygen.

In going back to give credit (well, in this case, discredit) to its poster, it was gone. Perhaps because it was largely inaccurate. But the truth is just as fascinating, if lacking the fun image of layers of diamonds.

“The towering peaks of Zion aren’t growing by inches each year, but they are part of a slow and powerful uplift. The Colorado Plateau, which holds Zion National Park, is being gently pushed upward by forces deep within the Earth’s crust — at a pace of only a few inches every thousand years. Over millions of years, this steady rise, combined with relentless erosion by water and wind, has sculpted the dramatic cliffs and canyons we see today.

Around 200 million years ago, the world looked very different. All the continents were joined in one vast supercontinent called Pangea. When Pangea began to break apart, new ocean basins formed, mountains rose, and volcanoes erupted along the shifting edges of continents. Deep in the mantle, about 90 to 150 miles below Earth’s surface, immense heat and pressure turned carbon into diamonds. Only rarely did volcanic eruptions called kimberlites carry those diamonds upward through narrow, pipe-like channels to reach the surface.

Diamonds don’t turn into coal — they are both forms of carbon, but they form in completely different ways. Coal comes from ancient plant matter buried in swamps and compressed over millions of years, while diamonds are born far deeper, under extreme heat and pressure.

Oil, too, forms from life — but not deep in the mantle or through bacterial “alchemy.” Tiny marine organisms like plankton and algae die and settle to the seafloor, where they are buried under layers of sediment. Over millions of years, heat and pressure transform their remains into oil and natural gas, which slowly migrate upward through porous rock until trapped in underground reservoirs.

Meanwhile, life in the oceans keeps Earth breathing. Microscopic phytoplankton absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide, using photosynthesis to create energy and release oxygen — a gas that sustains nearly every living creature on the planet. Scientists estimate that about 50–80% of Earth’s oxygen comes from these tiny, drifting plants that fill the seas with life.”