Sean King

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San Juan, Puerto Rico, United States

Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Sahara Was Once Green

New York Times: Other scientists said the discovery appeared to provide spectacular evidence that nothing, not even the arid expanse of the Sahara, was changeless. About 100 million years ago, this land was forested and occupied by dinosaurs and enormous crocodiles. Around 50,000 years ago, people moved in and left stone tools and mounds of shells, fish bones and other refuse. The lakes dried up in the last Ice Age.

Then the rains and lakes of a fecund Sahara returned about 12,000 years ago, and remained, except for one 1,000-year interval, until about 4,500 years ago. Geologists have long known that the region’s basins retained mineral residue of former lakes, and other explorers have found scatterings of human artifacts from that time, as Dr. Sereno did at Gobero in 2000.


Humans were apparently producing sufficient CO2 way back when to turn the lush, green Sahara to a desert of sand? Who knew?!

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