(Photo : Stéphane Bidouze / Fotolia via Science Daily )
Ancient forests may have helped stabilize the Earth's carbon dioxide levels and, therefore, its climate, a new study published in Biogeosciences suggests.
"As CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere fall, the Earth loses its greenhouse effect, which can lead to glacial conditions," lead-author Joe Quirk from the University of Sheffield said in a statement. "Over the last 24 million years, the geologic conditions were such that atmospheric CO2 could have fallen to very low levels - but it did not drop below a minimum concentration of about 180 to 200 parts per million. Why?"
