The term
"ancient pollen" refers to pollen grains that are very old. It represents the microscopic particles produced by plants and preserved in sediment or other materials over long periods of time.
Ancient pollen is used by scientists to understand past environments, climate changes, and the history of plant life on Earth.
Full definition
Ancient pollen grains that were floating in the air when mammoths roamed Southern California are providing new insights into historic droughts in the region, including how a series of mega-droughts between about 27,500 and 25,500 years ago changed the ecological landscape.
Researchers have
used ancient pollen to date archeological sites, he says, but this is the first time its been used to try to finger murderers.
With the help of a graduate student, Williams will look for a kind of mammoth proxy: sporormiella, a fungus that lives in the dung of large herbivores, and grains
of ancient pollen that can reveal what kind of vegetation once grew around the lake.
The team also
analyzed ancient pollens deposited by the flood in sediments near the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Holland Tunnel, as well as walrus fossils buried by the flood in the offshore sediment lobes.
Ancient pollen samples suggest that the landscape was a bit like today's Chilean Andes: grassy tundra dotted with small trees.This vegetated period peaked during the middle Miocene, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were around 400 to 600 parts per million.
Not everything from St. Paul Island is muddy: The team collected vegetation to compare it
with ancient pollen and other clues to the environment stored in the sediment cores to learn how the island has changed over time
Charcoal and
ancient pollen records suggest the niche space needed by whitebark pine is much larger than models estimate.
As an example, by drilling deep down into lake beds, researchers obtain sediment cores that can be examined
for ancient pollen, seeds and microorganisms.
The extreme age of this clonal colony of huon pines in Tasmania was discovered by carbon -
dating ancient pollen found at the bottom of a nearby lakebed.
Professor Moore knew more
about ancient pollen than he did about the psychology of eighteen - year - olds and, by trying to stop us from taking plate tectonics seriously, he just made it more intriguing.
Most telling were studies in the 1930s and 1940s of Scandinavian lakes and bogs,
using ancient pollen to find what plants had lived in the region when the layers of clay («varves») were laid down.
In particular, from the early 20th century forward, a few scientists in Sweden and elsewhere developed the study
of ancient pollens («palynology»).
The team also took core samples of mud from 1 to 2 meters below the seafloor and
analyzed ancient pollen to determine the age of the samples.
Ancient pollen samples suggest that the landscape was a bit like today's Chilean Andes: grassy tundra dotted with small trees.
Within the muck lies a forensic record of what fell, washed or otherwise settled onto the bottom of this lake: fungal spores, fragments of plants,
ancient pollen, volcanic ash, the remains of tiny crustaceans — and maybe even DNA from the mammoths themselves, shed while wallowing in the water.
The ancient pollen grains are large and apparently clumped together readily, a clue that the plant that bore the flowers was pollinated by creatures and not by the wind, the researchers report online today in Biology Letters.