The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during prehistoric times is a warning

摘要

Professor Martin Kennedy from the University of Adelaide (School of Earth & Environmental Sciences), and Professor Thomas Wagner from Newcastle University, UK (Civil Engineering and Geosciences) have been studying "greenhouse oceans" - those that have been depleted of oxygen and are suffering increases in carbon dioxide and temperature. Using core samples drilled from the ocean bed off the coast of western Africa, the geologists studied layers of sediment from the Late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) across a 400,000-year timespan. They found a significant amount of organic material - marine life - buried within deoxygenated layers of the sediment.