Ancient climate analysis reveals unknown global processes
Story by Adam Hadhazy • 19h
According to highly cited conventional models, cooling and a major drop in sea levels about 34 million years ago should have led to widespread continental erosion and deposited gargantuan amounts of sandy material onto the ocean floor. This was, after all, one of the most drastic climate transitions on Earth since the demise of the dinosaurs.
Yet a new Stanford review of hundreds of studies going back decades contrastingly reports that across the margins of all seven continents, little to no sediment has ever been found dating back to this transition. The discovery of this globally extensive gap in the geologic record was published this week in Earth-Science Reviews.
"The results have left us wondering, 'where did all the sediment go?'" said study senior author Stephan Graham, the Welton Joseph and Maud L'Anphere Crook Professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "Answering that question will help us get a better fundamental understanding about the functioning of sedimentary systems and how climatic changes imprint on the deep marine sedimentary record."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/ancient-climate-analysis-reveals-unknown-global-processes/ar-AA1s9OXg?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=429d7afea7bf40e4a06416715fef1753&ei=124
