Regis Philbin
Apr 25th, 2007, 06:58 PM
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-04-25T054836Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-295537-1.xml&archived=False
Fossil Arctic animal tracks point to climate risks
Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:00 AM IST
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
COAL MINE SEVEN, Svalbard, Norway (Reuters) - Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida, giving clues to risks from modern global warming, a scientist said.
Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg (880 lb), add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high.
"The climate here about 55 million years ago was more like that of Florida," Appy Sluijs, an expert in ancient ecology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said in Coal Mine Seven on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
"Where we are now was once a temperate rainforest," he said on Tuesday, at the end of a horizontal mine shaft 5 kms (3 miles) inside a mountain and 300 metres (600 feet) below the surface.
He pointed to a row of footprint impressions found in December in the roof of the mine north of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on the barren treeless Norwegian archipelago 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole.
Sluijs said forests grew in the Arctic when carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was at about 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere because of natural swings in the climate.
Fossil Arctic animal tracks point to climate risks
Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:00 AM IST
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
COAL MINE SEVEN, Svalbard, Norway (Reuters) - Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida, giving clues to risks from modern global warming, a scientist said.
Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg (880 lb), add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high.
"The climate here about 55 million years ago was more like that of Florida," Appy Sluijs, an expert in ancient ecology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said in Coal Mine Seven on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
"Where we are now was once a temperate rainforest," he said on Tuesday, at the end of a horizontal mine shaft 5 kms (3 miles) inside a mountain and 300 metres (600 feet) below the surface.
He pointed to a row of footprint impressions found in December in the roof of the mine north of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on the barren treeless Norwegian archipelago 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole.
Sluijs said forests grew in the Arctic when carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was at about 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere because of natural swings in the climate.