Comet Enthusiast

To understand the fossil record and the diversity at any given time, scientists need to gain insight into conditions and match them up with the fossil record.

Greg Retallack of the University of Oregon in Eugene suggests that climate, and specifically global warming, may have contributed to fossil preservation. Retallack scanned through a database of 500 million years’ worth of fossils and found 41 individual episodes of “exceptional preservation” of organisms such as fish, crustaceans, insects and starfish scattered throughout the world.