> The process that forges new land (volcanism) is the same process that beats back snowball earth and re-balances the atmosphere with more CO2. And I believe v

> The process that forges new land (volcanism) is the same process that beats back snowball earth and re-balances the atmosphere with more CO2. And I believe volcanism, at least the sort that is most common today (that from ocean-margin subduction zones, rather than that from spreading zones like Iceland or hotspots like Hawaii) results from subducted sediments melting into magma, with their melting points reduced by the presence of subducted water. If so, then do we have the large amounts of sediment, created by the snowball-earth glaciation, setting the stage for the volcanism that ends it? There are fossils of Precambrian, post-snowball multi-cellular life, but they are not very much like, and nowhere near as diverse, as what appeared in the Cambrian, so I think the explosion still looks like a real event and not just an artifact of an imperfect record. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php