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)

From: Ecos | Date: August 1, 2006| Author: Pyper, Wendy | Copyright information

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 r...

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