Decline of carbon-dioxide-gobbling plankton coincided with ancient global cooling
Friday, January 9, 2009 - 11:22
in Earth & Climate
The evolutionary history of diatoms - abundant oceanic plankton that remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year - needs to be rewritten, according to a new Cornell study. The findings suggest that after a sudden rise in species numbers, diatoms abruptly declined about 33 million years ago - trends that coincided with severe global cooling...