How do scientist study earths past climate?
1 Answer
by studying fossilized layers or strata.
Explanation:
The nature of the fossils found in the sedimentary rocks gives clues as the the climate that existed when the fossils were living organisms.
For example there are vast deposits of coal from buried forests thought to be from the Metazoic Era. The presence of these coal beds indicates that the climate at the time was much more humid with higher levels of Carbon Dioxide than are presently found on earth. The Metazoic Era had uniform temperature and greenhouse effect causing lush vegetation.
Extinct elephants are found frozen in the Tundra of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada. The number of elephants and the types of food found in fossilized frozen bodies of the elephants indicates that these areas were once much warming than they presently are.
The fossil evidence gives clues about the climate that existed at the time the organisms lived.
