Lake sediment used to trace climate history

From Science Daily: Turkey’s Lake Van Provides Precise Insights Into Eurasia’s Climate History.

The bottom of Turkey’s Lake Van is covered by a layer of mud several hundreds of metres deep. For climatologists this unprepossessing slime is worth its weight in gold: summer by summer pollen has been deposited from times long past. From it they can detect right down to a specific year what climatic conditions prevailed at the time of the Neanderthals, for example. These archives may go back as much as half a million years. [continue]

One thought on “Lake sediment used to trace climate history

  1. It’s amazing to me that the pollen grains are so sturdy, even after having been washed out of the mud by hyuralonic acid (sorry I can’t spell). Poor little vegetable seeds would have long since disintegrated. Would that our vegetables were as hardy as our weeds.

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