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The oldest ecosystems on Earth
What they teach us about resilience.
Based on detailed studies of climate records and fossils, paleobiologist Carlos Jaramillo and his colleagues have traced the origin of the modern tropical rainforest—defined as being perpetually warm and humid, multi-storied with closed canopies, and dominated by flowering plants, lianas, and epiphytes—to the beginning of the Cenozoic era, shortly after the asteroid impact that contributed to the demise of non-avian dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. By slowing waves, trapping sediments, performing photosynthesis, filtering and oxygenating water, and sequestering carbon in their structures, both seagrass meadows and coral reefs make their environments calmer, clearer, less acidic, more nutrient-rich, and all around more habitable. Rainforests provide both by expelling huge volumes of water into the atmosphere, along with numerous tiny airborne particles, such as pollen grains, fungal spores, microbes, fragments of insect shells, and various organic compounds.
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