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I'm seeing a lot of comments speculating on how coral reefs got along for hundreds of millions of years. While coral species have existed for this long, that is

I'm seeing a lot of comments speculating on how coral reefs got along for hundreds of millions of years. While coral species have existed for this long, that is not how long these ecosystems have existed. What we think of as coral reefs have only been around for ~24 million years. This tweet has a nice diagram and pointers to resources: https://twitter.com/RemoteReefs/status/1141255435200192512 https://twitter.com/RemoteReefs/status/1141255435200192512

peter303 7y ago
Then they would have missed the Eocene hyperthermal 55.2 million years ago a rapid 5 to 8 C warmup due to a huge influx of carbon into the atmosphere (8 to 20 times all human activity). Its not known where all this carbon came from yet.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lowken10 7y ago
  It came from the ocean after the ocean was heated by the sun.
pmiller2 7y ago
24 million years is still ~6-10x as long as hominids have been around, and ~70x as long as Homo Sapiens has walked the earth.