MIT/WHOI Joint Program student Camilo Ponton and his advisor, WHOI geologist Liviu Giosan, examine a sediment core taken from the Bay of Bengal near the mouth of the Godavari River. The core yielded shells of Globigerinoides ruber, a planktonic foraminiferan, and plant waxes that had been flushed into the river and then settled to the seafloor, preserving a record of conditions in the bay and on land in ages past. Ponton found evidence that the Indian monsoon has lessened and become less predictable over the past 5,000 years, resulting in extended periods of drought and changes in vegetation on the Indian peninsula. Ponton, Giosan, and their colleagues correlated those environmental changes with changes in human cultures of the region. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)[back]
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