Ross-Ziegler Blip

"A tiny aberration in the fossil and carbon records of Earth, noted by two Earth geologists in 2332-and matched on several other worlds, demonstrating a gap in certain species so tiny and uniform, that it had been attributed not to a biological catastrophe, but rather had been investigated and then abandoned as odd evidence of warping or stretching of spacetime itself. The Ross-Ziegler Blip is now being opened and reinvestigated in connection to the events of 2552."

- Dr. William Arthur Iqbal

The Ross-Ziegler Blip is a stratigraphy event on Earth and a number of other colonised planets named for two Earth geologists who discovered it in 2332, dating back approximately 100,000 years ago during the Upper Pleistocene, presumably marking the activation of the Halo Array by the Forerunners that wiped the galaxy of sentient life. Because the Halo's only affected sentient life, the anomaly in the fossil record was originally dismissed as evidence of spatial distortion until the discovery of the Array by the UNSC in 2552.

The event may have been named after Bonnie Ross-Ziegler, a manager at Microsoft Game Studios who worked on Halo Wars.