An analysis of more than 70,000 fossils indicates that mollusk communities were incredibly resilient to major climatic shifts during the last ice age.
The researchers obtained fossils from sediment cores drilled in terrestrial and deep-sea environments. Credit: Fabiano Gamberipublished earlier this year.
The ice ages were a turbulent time for global marine ecosystems. Sea levels rose and fell as water from the world's oceans was cyclically released from and trapped in massive continental glaciers. All told, there were about 17 ice ages during the Pleistocene, starting approximately 2.5 million years ago and ending with the final retreat of the glaciers just 12,000 years before present.
"It would have been possible to walk from modern-day Italy to Croatia," Scarponi said."The entire northern part of the basin was exposed and transformed into an immense lowland plain." When the glaciers receded and the Adriatic swelled to its modern boundaries, mollusk species reverted back to their previous abundance patterns. If scientists hadn't known there was an ice age in between, it would have seemed like nothing much had happened at all based solely on mollusks.
Mollusk species underwent a stark change in abundance during the most recent ice age, but a nearly identical species assemblage returned as temperatures warmed and sea levels rose. Credit: Daniele Scarponi
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