Indian Ocean cocktail party leaves trail of party hats behind

Indian Ocean cocktail party leaves trail of party hats behind

 Scientists have unexpectedly found traces of the supercontinent Gondwana in the Indian Ocean - in the process solving a mystery behind a large group of ocean 'mountains' known as seamounts, including Christmas Island.

Ancient environment found to drive marine biodiversity

Ancient environment found to drive marine biodiversity

Much of our knowledge about past life has come from the fossil record – but how accurately does that reflect the true history and drivers of biodiversity on Earth? "It's a question that goes back a long way to the time of Darwin, who looked at the fossil record and tried to understand what it tells us about the history of life," says Shanan Peters, an assistant professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In fact, the fossil record can tell us a great deal, he says in a new study. In a report published Friday, Nov. 25 in Science magazine, he and colleague Bjarte Hannisdal, of the University of Bergen in Norway, show that the evolution of marine life over the past 500 million years has been robustly and independently driven by both ocean chemistry and sea level changes.

Amazon fire season 'linked to ocean temperature'

Amazon fire season 'linked to ocean temperature'

Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies can help predict the severity of Amazon fire seasons, a study has suggested.

A team of US scientists found there was a correlation between El Nino patterns in the Pacific and fire activity in the eastern Amazon.

Writing in the journal Science, they say they also found a link between Atlantic SST changes and fires in southern areas of South America.

They said the data could help produce forecasts of forthcoming fire seasons.