Missing fossils could warn of extreme climate to come

Did the tropics overheat during the Eocene some 55 to 34 million years ago? The answer holds the key to how our planet will respond to global warming, according to one climate researcher.

The Earth went through a prolonged phase of extremely high temperatures during the Eocene, in which even the poles were ice-free.

Recently, however, better calibrated data have suggested that ocean temperatures could have soared as high as 41