Lost Giant Poop Disrupts Whole Planet
Monday, October 26, 2015 - 17:40
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Giants once roamed the earth. Oceans teemed with ninety-foot-long whales, huge land animals ate vast quantities of food and, yes, deposited vast quantities of poop. A new study shows that these whales and outsized land mammals, as well as seabirds and migrating fish, played a vital role in keeping the planet fertile by transporting nutrients from ocean depths and spreading them across seas, up rivers, and deep inland, even to mountaintops. However, massive declines and extinctions of many of these animals has deeply damaged this planetary nutrient recycling system, a team of scientists reported October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. read more