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Article: Fossilised giant clams give high fidelity climate records: ancient giant clams dug from Papua New Guinea's tropical rainforests have provided Australian paleoclimatologists with a unique and detailed record of climate 400 000 years ago. The new lead promises to help answer some of today's central climate change questions.(Bridget Ayling explains how she got good paleoclimate data for research)
- Article from:
- Ecos
- Article date:
- August 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 CSIRO Publishing. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Three years ago, Australian National University PhD student Bridget Ayling despaired that her research project had stalled. In order to reconstruct the climate of past interglacial periods, she had visited Henderson Island, in the far south-eastern Pacific Ocean, to collect 330 000- and 630 000-year-old fossil corals for climate studies. But only a few of her samples were found to be useful.
Describing the painstaking work involved in getting good paleoclimate data for research, she explains why.
'Living corals have a porous skeleton composed of aragonite--a form of calcium carbonate--that is laid down in growth bands, much like tree rings, and which ...