Scienceblogtwo

In order to better foresee when the temperature of our world would tip over into dangerous zone, some scientists are becoming into clam "whisperers." It may seem strange for scholars to pay attention to a bivalve with a tight lip, but as we are learning, clams are great natural historians. The growth bands on their shells, like the rings on a tree, store important information about the environment and how it has evolved through time. These complex paragraphs can be dissected and examined by scientists centuries after they were first "written," much like the lines of a diary. In fact, more than five hundred million years ago—nearly three hundred million years before dinosaurs appeared—clams' ancestors began carving out tunnels in the stone calcite, providing an unrivaled insight into past temperatures. These antiquated records are currently issuing a grave warning. A potentially disastrous tipping point in the Earth's climate has been discovered by a fresh an...