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The field of palaeoclimatology examines the history of climate, it's changing distribution and the dynamics responsible. It also provides important information for understanding palaeobiogeography, vegetation history, weathering, erosion and drainage patterns.
The study of palaeoclimate has a long history dating back to at least the early part of the nineteenth century. Lyell devoted three chapters to the subject in his "Principles of Geology" and for 30 years or so it dominated the interest of the foremost geologists of the day, not least because the large changes in climate were readily apparent and provided the most spectacular evidence of a dynamic world. Arguments about the warmth of the early Tertiary and Mesozoic are not recent discoveries.
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LEFT: Field work on the Isle of Arran. It wasn't always this wet. 250 million years ago...this was a desert.
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