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A little-known marine organism on Canada's East Coast contains what a team of U.S. and Canadian scientists believes is a rich, untapped archive of temperature data, which could vastly improve the world's understanding of climate change.
Scientists spent the past summer on an expedition ship along the coast of Newfoundland, scuba diving in shallow, inshore waters to collect samples of coralline algae, one of the longest-living marine life forms on the planet.
Corallines -- specifically Clathromorphum compactum -- are a pinkish, coral-like plant that cover parts of the rocky bottom of the coastal sections of the Labrador Sea.
They can grow forever if left undisturbed and, like trees, their age can be precisely measured by a careful reading of growth bands.
Jochen Halfar, a professor and geologist at the University of Toronto, and Walter Adey, a geobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, who is considered the world's leading expert on corallines, both say these small, innocuous plants hold the key to learning how ocean temperatures have changed over time in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, a critical region of rapid climate change.
Read more: Coralline algae may shed light on climate change
Scientists spent the past summer on an expedition ship along the coast of Newfoundland, scuba diving in shallow, inshore waters to collect samples of coralline algae, one of the longest-living marine life forms on the planet.
Corallines -- specifically Clathromorphum compactum -- are a pinkish, coral-like plant that cover parts of the rocky bottom of the coastal sections of the Labrador Sea.
They can grow forever if left undisturbed and, like trees, their age can be precisely measured by a careful reading of growth bands.
Jochen Halfar, a professor and geologist at the University of Toronto, and Walter Adey, a geobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, who is considered the world's leading expert on corallines, both say these small, innocuous plants hold the key to learning how ocean temperatures have changed over time in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, a critical region of rapid climate change.
Read more: Coralline algae may shed light on climate change
