My August 2011 Science news roundup: An underground river flowing two miles beneath the Amazon River has been detected; ancient microbes may have been found in 3.46 billion year old Australian sandstone bed (also: a fossil of the earliest mammalian ancestor has been found in China) ; a dinosaur era mass extinction of marine life has been attributed to a massive methane gas release.
Tag: blue-green algae
World's Marine Plankton in Peril – 40% Decline Since 1950
Phytoplankton–tiny, marine plants that formthe basis of our oceans’ food chain–absorb and sequester large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and generate half of the world’s oxygen supply. Given such an important ecosystem service as this, one would hope that our oceans’ algae numbers stay high…but, the results of a three year data analysis are anything but encouraging.