New Study Also Links Late Ordovician Dieoff To Rapid Climate Change - 75% Of Sea Life Died

[hatrack]

Seth Finnegan, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), and colleagues published a paper in the journal Science on January 27, 2011, that details a new methodology for determining climate conditions from ancient fossils. The paper was reviewed at the ScienceDaily site. The new method can differentiate between changes in temperature and changes in the size of continental ice sheets.

John Eiler, Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry at Caltech, developed a new type of paleothermometer that evaluates temperature based on gross isotopic structure. Higher temperatures produce more random bonding and lower temperatures produce "clumping." The sources of the isotopes were fossilized marine animals from North America.

This new procedure allowed the researchers to estimate the size of glaciation and the temperatures that produced the Late Ordovician mass extinction in which approximately seventy-five percent of all marine life died. The Late Ordovician mass extinction is dated at 450 million years ago.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Late Ordovician extinction linked to climate change - National Paelenotology Science News | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/paelenotology-science-news-in-national/late-ordovician-extinction-linked-to-climate-change#ixzz1CZzgX6ei

EDIT

http://www.examiner.com/paelenotology-science-news-in-national/late-ordovician-extinction-linked-to-climate-change

[Nihil]

1. K & R while waiting ...

... for one of our resident concern trolls to deliberately miss the point of the
OP by posting that there were no cars or factories back in the Ordovician ...

:eyes:

[yellowcanine]

2. I suspect that most mass extinctions were caused by rapid climate change - that is WHY we should be

so concerned about the present day global warming - it is likely that none of the climate change events in the past were THIS rapid.