Image for representative purposes only.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Here are some of the most interesting research papers to have appeared in top science journals last week.
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Fossil plant study
About 14,500 to 5,000 years ago, North Africa was green with vegetation and the period is known as the Green Sahara or African Humid Period. Until now, researchers have assumed that the rain was brought by an enhanced summer monsoon. Now, a study of pollen and leaf waxes extracted from sediments have shown that there were two monsoon systems. "We have winter rain on the northern margin of the Sahara, the monsoon on the southern margin, and between the two areas an overlap of the two rain systems which provides rains there during both summer and winter, albeit rather sparsely," explains first author Rachid Cheddadi in a release.