http://phys.org/news/2014-02-seashells-million-year-old-weather.html
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'The shells we used are of a type of plankton called foraminifera. They're only about one tenth of a millimetre big, or small rather, and have been around over 150 million years,
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As plankton grow they build a bit more onto their shells every day by turning elements in the sea water into harder minerals and adding them on. The impurities in the shell depend on what was in the sea water as the plankton grew, so these million-year-old shells can give us an almost daily snapshot of the chemistry of the oceans as it was when they were still alive.
'We realised plankton have these growth bands, like tree rings, which we thought might tell us something in more detail. It turns out these bands are produced almost daily so you may one day be able to get a 5 day weather report by looking at them,'
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So amazingly, this should eventually allow as to determine what the the weather was like over a particular 5 day period over a particular area of ocean up to 150 million years ago!
So it must be possible to have a natural unbroken continuous record of the weather change record in the 'weekly' layers ('layers' only visible via chemical analysis and with somewhat arbitrarily defined boundaries ) of sediment of the ocean floor showing the weather change on the ocean surface for every week all the way from about 150 million years ago almost right up to the current month today (it takes quite a few days/weeks for the sediment to reach the floor from higher up ). That surely would be great data for climate scientists to use to refine their models!
Originally posted by humySo the dating of the strata is strictly through the layering? Could they see times when the layering went down faster or slower?
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-seashells-million-year-old-weather.html
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'The shells we used are of a type of plankton called foraminifera. They're only about one tenth of a millimetre big, or small rather, and have been around over 150 million years,
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As plankton grow they build a bit more onto their shells every day by turning elements ...[text shortened]... gher up ). That surely would be great data for climate scientists to use to refine their models!
Originally posted by humyThis kind of dating is only opinions based on unproven assumptions. This kind of dating is not real science.
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-seashells-million-year-old-weather.html
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'The shells we used are of a type of plankton called foraminifera. They're only about one tenth of a millimetre big, or small rather, and have been around over 150 million years,
...
....
...
As plankton grow they build a bit more onto their shells every day by turning elements ...[text shortened]... gher up ). That surely would be great data for climate scientists to use to refine their models!
Originally posted by sonhouse
So the dating of the strata is strictly through the layering? Could they see times when the layering went down faster or slower?
So the dating of the strata is strictly through the layering?
No. They must also take into account the chemical differences of the layers in each plankton shell.
Could they see times when the layering went down faster or slower?
I assume so but I guess it wouldn’t matter if, hypothetically, for some reason they couldn't providing they can still both count the annual layers in the strata (or do something equivalent to that ) up to the modern day and observe the chemical differences of the layers in each plankton shell. Providing they can make those two observations, they logically must be able to deduce from that physical data alone what the weather was like (in general terms ) in any given one week period on the corresponding ocean surface up to 150 million years ago! Isn't science just great!