No one is likely to start investing in expensive resource exploration and extraction if they could be evicted by an international ruling, so the outer shelves will not see development for another 30 years or so, says Baker. (scientificamerican.com)
To get a better estimate, the consortium of 17 researchers from Europe and Australia carefully drilled two holes, one 86 meters deep into the reef's inner shelf, the other 210 meters into a narrow reef skirting the margin of the outer shelf. (sciencemag.org)
Strontium isotope ratios in the outer shelf core date its oldest coral remains to between 490,000 and 1.05 million years old. (sciencemag.org)