Plant Fossils and Rapid Climate Change

Global Temperatures and CO2 emissions correlations, 1880-2019 (credit: Climate Central)

What can fossil plants tells us about ancient climate change? Actually, a great deal.

Recent discoveries from a era of rapid climate change 56 million years ago offer a warning of what can environmentally and ecologically occur when run-away greenhouse gases fill the atmosphere. Paleontologists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have discovered catastrophic climate change happened during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) by investigating fossils from plants from that era.

Scott Wing in the Museum explains the importance of their discovery. The plant fossils in the their collection record a cautionary tale of catastrophic climate change that everyone should be aware.