Centric Diatom Unlocks 11,000-Year Warming Pattern (IMAGE)

Princeton University

Centric Diatom Unlocks 11,000-Year Warming Pattern

Caption

Diatoms like this one, microscopic plants with silica shells, trapped trace amounts of nitrogen in their shells as they grew. Researchers in the Sigman Lab at Princeton University were able to extract that minuscule amount of nitrogen from countless fossil diatoms and create a model for the activity of the Southern Ocean during the Holocene, a period that began about 11,000 years ago. This centric diatom, photographed through a microscope, measures about 70 microns across and lived in the Indian Southern Ocean during the Holocene.

Credit

Anja Studer, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry

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