Your DNA is n’t just a blueprint of who you are — it ’s an archive of where you came from . Same move for the DNA of all life on Earth , including the mollusk — snails , slugs , gelt , and cephalopods — wriggling around on the Southern Ocean ’s seafloor . It was only a matter of time before someone gain the genetic code of these squishy bottom - inhabitant may declare clues to the history ( and future ) of Antarctica ’s most vulnerable ice sheet .
That , at least , is the suggestion of a gripping newpaper , which propose using marine invertebrate living around West Antarctica to reconstruct the ice sheet ’s story . The idea is that if a thaw clime caused the ice sheet to retreat dramatically in the past , it would have opened a trans - Antarctic seaway link up populations of fauna live in the Weddell , Amundsen , and perhaps Ross Seas . Signatures of any trans - south-polar fraternizing should be recorded in the genic code of any tentacled posterity live today .
In other word , mollusk sex could tell us precisely what climate conditions could have a vast Antarctic ice plane to collapse . Go fig .
There certainly has n’t been a better fourth dimension for outside - the - boxwood thinking on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ( WAIS ) , which contains enough frozen water to raise ocean levels byup to fifteen feet . Agrowing bodyof evidencesuggests helping of the ice sheet are exceptionally vulnerable to founder in a warming world . Warm water is chewing away at the float ice shelf that skirt the ice tabloid , and one of its buttressing glaciers , Pine Island , is thinning . Models intimate that Pine Island , and its enceinte neighboring glacier Thwaites , could experience speedy retreatif warming trends stay .
But there ’s stilla lot of uncertaintyregarding how quickly the WAIS could fall in , and how much warming is required to trigger off such an event .
In the newfangled paper , which appear in Quaternary Science Reviews , Jan Strugnell of James Cook University and his fellow specifically call out the last interglacial full stop , 130,000 - 116,000 eld ago . At the time , global temperatures were about 2 degrees Celsius high than they are today , and ocean levels were 5.5 to 9 meters ( 18 to 30 feet ) higher .
lowly estimates for sea level rising during the last interglacial can be accounted for by melting the Greenland ice sheet and smaller mountaintop glaciers worldwide . But for get 30 foot of ocean storey rise , you ’ve also got to disappear a practiced chunk of West Antarctica .
A partial flop of the WAIS would have opened a seaway between the Weddell and Amundsen ocean . A more complete melt would have linked up the Ross Sea , too . fit in to the writer , the opening of one or both of these two seaways — or neither of them — could , in theory , be distinguishable in the genetical structure of population whose ancestors lived and migrated across the Southern Ocean during that time .
“ interrogation of the genomic signatures of bottom - dwelling marine specie using the latest methods can furnish an independent window into the wholeness of the WAIS more than 100,000 years ago , ” the authors write . “ Periods of connectivity facilitate by trans - Antarctic seaways could be revealed by dating coalescent event recorded in DNA . ”
The source write that the idealistic candidate would be an organism found across the Southern Ocean , one whose DNA contains some grade of “ phylogeographic social organisation , ” think of populations that are geographically separate are also genetically unlike . Strugnell assure Earther he ’s already begun some work on Turquet ’s octopus ( Pareledone turqueti ) , a seafloor - dwelling metal money found all around Antarctica .
David Barnes , an ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey who was not involved with the bailiwick , tell Earther that the paper ’s proposed access “ has a lot of merit . ”
“ Indeed I ca n’t think of a better one , ” he said , while cautioning that it will probably be unmanageable to obtain samples from areas around the Antarctic ship route Bill Gates . “ Nevertheless we should be aspirational and we make ever more considerable leap in polar research all the time , ” Barnes added .
Mike MacFerrin , a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who also was n’t involved , thought the report offered “ a really coolheaded glide slope and a wicked estimate to try . ” He noted that the method scientist use to determine the last meter Greenland was ice - destitute — which involve depend rarified isotope deposited on exposed bedrock — don’t work so well around the boundary of West Antarctica , where most of the bedrock lies below ocean level .
“ If the coming work , it would give us the first conclusive grounds of the last fourth dimension [ West Antarctica ] was uncover , ” he said .
Hopefully , scientists interested in pursuing this plan of attack can commence roll up samples shortly — before clime changereshapes Antarctica ’s seafloor community yet again .
AntarcticaClimate changeice on thin ice
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