Scientists study ancient global warming
BALBOA, Panama, Nov. 11 (UPI) — An abrupt global warming episode 56 million years ago led to an explosion of plant diversity in northern South America, Panamanian researchers say.
A 9-degree Fahrenheit spike in temperatures during 10,000 years — a blink of an eye on a geological scale — had researchers expecting to find evidence of a mass die-off of many tropical plant species, sciencenews.org reported.
“We were expecting to find rapid extinction, a total change in the forest,” says study leader Carlos Jaramillo, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. “What we found was just the opposite — a very fast addition of many new species, and a huge spike in the diversity of tropical plants.”…