Raising mountains for a habitable Earth.

Peak-metamorphic pressures in crustal rocks show orogens could grow substantially thicker after two intervals—2.7–2.2 and 0.8–0.7 billion years ago—linked to Earth-system shifts.

• Why it matters: Mountain building can regulate atmospheric and ocean chemistry through weathering, but the timing and mechanistic coupling to habitability over deep time remain uncertain.
• What they did: The study used peak-metamorphic pressure records from crustal rocks to infer burial depth changes, then compared those intervals with terrigenous element and nutrient fluxes and with biological sulfur metabolism and surface oxygenation.
• The result: The two orogenic-growth periods are broadly synchronous with major flux increases and oxygenation changes, supporting enhanced weathering of higher mountains and first-order links between geodynamics and habitability over the past 3 billion years.

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