Feb. 19, 2003 DENVER, Colo. --- How will global warming affect
life on Earth? Uncertainties about future climate change and the
impact of human activity make it difficult to predict exactly
what lies ahead. But the past offers clues, say scientists who
are studying a period of warming that occurred about 55 million
years ago. In a joint project of the University of Michigan, the
University of New Hampshire and the Smithsonian Institution,
researchers have been analyzing fossils from the badlands of
Wyoming found in a distinctive layer of bright red sedimentary
rock that was deposited at the boundary between the Paleocene
and Eocene epochs---a time of apparent sudden climate change.
The researchers described their findings in a paper presented
Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science. "The interval of Earth history that
we're studying is marked by a short-term global warming event
thought to have occurred when something triggered the release of
methane from metha