“Our reconstruction shows that the first half of the Holocene was colder than in industrial times due to the cooling effects of remnant ice sheets from the previous glacial period—contrary to previous reconstructions of global temperatures,” says lead author Samantha Bova, a postdoctoral researcher associate in the lab of coauthor Yair Rosenthal, professor in the department of marine and coastal sciences and department of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Scientists used marine calcareous (calcium carbonate-containing) fossils from foraminifers—single-celled organisms that live at the ocean surface—to reconstruct the temperature histories of the two most recent warm intervals on Earth. They are the Last Interglacial period from 128,000 to 115,000 years ago and the Holocene.