Ancient climate change made plants shift range
Jonathan Bloch studies in an environment similar to Wind River Basin above, but which was once a rainforest. He told Earth & Sky: "The way in which plants move as a result of the global warming was something that we hadn't expected and contributed an interesting piece to the story."
DB: This is Earth & Sky, on fossil evidence of the way that plants shift their ranges in response to climate change.
JB: Jonathan Bloch is a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Florida and Florida Museum of Natural History. He was part of a team that discovered fossils of plants and pollen – some related to sumac and poinsettia – in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming.
DB: The fossils date back 55 million years, to a time when average global temperatures are thought to have risen as much as 10 degrees Celsius over 10,000 years. These same plants were known to be much farther south at an earlier time in history – before the warming event.
Jonathan Bloch: It was really interesting to see that a lot of the plants had come from much more southern distributions. One of the expectations for a warming event is that you might have range changes in which plants will move north from their southern distibutions as climate warms up.
JB: But what’s also interesting is what this says for our future.
Jonathan Bloch: Prior to this example, we didn’t know that’s specifically how forests and mammals would react to a warming event like this. It’s an interesting test in the past to see how forests and mammals might react to climate change that we might experience in the future.
_DB: For today, that’s our show. Our thanks to NASA explore, discover, understand. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Our thanks to:
Jonathan I. Bloch
Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Florida
Additional Teacher Resources
Science News for Kids: A Change in Climate
Over the course of hundreds, thousands, and millions of years, weather trends affect life on Earth in more dramatic ways. Ice ages or long droughts, for example, can wipe out certain types of plants and animals. Although many species manage to survive such extreme, long-term climate shifts, their living conditions also change.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Climate Change
EPA’s Climate Change Site offers comprehensive information on the issue of climate change in a way that is accessible and meaningful to all parts of society ? communities, individuals, business, states and localities, and governments.
