Microfossils unravel climate history of tropical Africa
...iver. This core contained eroded land material and microfossils from marine algae. The results show that the land environment of tropical Africa was cooled more than the adjacent Atlantic Ocean during the last ice-age. This large temperature difference between land and ocean surface resulted in drier conditions c...Red hot chili pepper research spices up historical record
...on and spread of chili peppers by analysing starch microfossils recovered from grinding stones, sediments and charred ceramic cookware. In a forthcoming article in the journal Science, they report that common varieties of chili peppers (Capsicum species) were widely used in a region extending from the Bahamas to ...Smithsonian scientists report ancient chili pepper history
...identifying chili pepper starch grains. The starch microfossils were found at seven sites dating from 6,000 years ...ailable to archaeologistsstarch, pollen grains and microfossils called phytoliths. The team of researchers adding to this collection discovered that starch grains f...Researchers identify a 'heartbeat' in Earth's climate
... researchers were particularly interested in these microfossils because they came from the Oligocene epoch, a time in Earth's history known for falling temperatures. "The continuity and length of the data series we gathered and analyzed allowed for unprecedented insights into the complex interactions between e...Oldest animal fossils may have been bacteria
.... The discovery "complicates our understanding of microfossils thought to bethe oldest animals," said lead author Jake Bailey, a graduate student inearth sciences at the University of Southern California. Bailey made his discovery by combining two separate findings aboutThiomargarita, the world's largest known ...First Amazon-Andean crop plant transfer and corn processing in Peru 3600-4000 years ago
... culinary, cultural link: 3600-4000 year-old plant microfossils and starch grains. Heading to the supermarket to pick up some corn flour, a couple of tomatoes or a can of beans usually doesn't conjure up the notion of 10,000 years of agricultural development in the Americas--a transition from hunter-gatherer cult......d finding thousands of 600 million year old embryo microfossils in the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng'an, South China, (Xiao, S., Zhang, Y., and Knoll, A.H., 1998, "Three-dimensional preservation of algae and animal embryos in a Neoproterozoic phosphorite," Nature, v. 391). Within th...