An allusion to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" -- a poem penned by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 about a seaman's long ocean voyage -- the word "albatross" has come to mean a wearisome burden.The albatross is also a large seabird, one species of which -- the short-tailed albatross of the North Atlantic -- went extinct about 400,000 years ago. Now researchers studying the sedimentary and fossil record in a limestone quarry in Bermuda have discovered exactly why they disappeared -- an extreme rise in sea levels caused vital nesting sites to be submerged completely underwater.
According to a recent ScienceDaily story, Storrs Olson, a zoologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Paul Hearty, a geologist from the Bald Head Island Conservancy, have proof that during an interglacial period of the Middle Pleistocene, rapidly melting ice sheets caused the sea level to rise more than 70 feet (21 meters), a catastrophic event for the coastal wildlife.
"These findings are incredibly important and have major relevance because of their potential predictive value," said Olson, "since this sea-level rise took place during the interglacial period most similar to the present one now in progress."
The report concluded that, "with future carbon dioxide levels possibly rising higher than any time in the past million years, it is important to consider the potential effects on polar ice sheets."
Now that's an albatross around our collective neck.
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