Climate: Past, Present & Future

Pollen

Dead Sea – lively stories of the past

Dr. Andrea Miebach, postdoc at the Institute of Geosciences, University of Bonn, Germany February 25, 2020

Dead Sea (photo: Andrea Miebach).

The Dead Sea is dead. Nothing can live there except for specialized microbes. The water with a salinity multiple times higher than seawater prevents a colonization by higher life forms. However, it does not prevent the input of organic material that can tell us stories about the past. A unique sediment record The Dead Sea, located at the lowest elevation on Earth – currently about 430 m below sea ...[Read More]

Pollen, more than forests’ story-tellers

Encarni Montoya, Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera (ICTJA-CSIC), c/Sole i Sabaris s/n, 08028 Barcelona (SPAIN) April 3, 2018

Name of proxy Sporomorphs (pollen grains and fern spores) Type of record Biostratigraphy and Geochronology markers, Vegetation dynamics Paleoenvironment Terrestrial environment Period of time investigated Present to 360 million years How does it work? The sporomorphs (pollen grains and fern spores) are cells produced by plants involved in the reproduction. They are microscopic (less than a fifth o ...[Read More]