[Rockhounds] Octopus DNA seems to confirm scientists’ theory about a long-standing geological mystery

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

A study of octopus DNA may have solved an enduring mystery about when the
rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/world/west-antarctic-ice-melt-climate/index.html>
last
collapsed, unlocking valuable information about how much future sea levels
may rise in a warming climate.

The innovative research focused on the genetic history of the Turquet’s
octopus (Pareledone turqueti), which lives on the seafloor across the
Antarctic, and what it could reveal about the geology of the region over
time.

Tracing past encounters across the species’ various populations suggested
the most recent collapse of the ice sheet
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/world/west-antarctic-ice-melt-climate/index.html>
occurred
more than 100,000 years ago during a period known as the Last Interglacial —
something geoscientists suspected but had not been able to confirm
definitively, according to the study published Thursday
<http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0664> in the journal Science.

“This project was exciting because it offers a brand-new perspective to
solve a long-standing question in the geoscience community,” said lead
study author Sally Lau, a postdoctoral research fellow at James Cook
University in Australia.

“DNA of living animals today contains all the information about their
ancestors (in the) past, so it’s like a time capsule,” she said.

The research team arrived at its findings by sequencing the DNA of 96
Turquet’s octopuses that had been collected by institutions around the
world and through fishing bycatch over the years. The oldest samples dated
to the 1990s, but when sequenced, their genes provided what was essentially
a detailed family tree going back millions of years.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/world/octopus-dna-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-climate-scn/index.html