Press Release: Scientists Use Ocean Drilling Data to Connect Seawater Chemistry with Climate Change and Evolution
Humans get much of the blame for modern climate change, with little attention paid to the contribution of other natural forces. But a new study in the July 20 issue of the journal Science sheds some light on one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years. And it has everything to do with the chemistry of the world’s oceans.
Ulrich Wortmann of the University of Toronto and Adina Paytan of the University of California, Santa Cruz are co-authors of a new study that points to the collision between India and Eurasia approximately 50 million years ago as a trigger of one interval of rapid change. This collision enhanced dissolution of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from modern-day Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India – remnants of which are exposed in the Zagros Mountains in Iran.
