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Ice caused large ancient sea level drop

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 27 (UPI) -- An ancient ice sheet accumulation probably caused a massive sea level drop across the globe, scientists said Friday.

Using seabed cores drilled in the New Jersey coastal plain, the scientists found ice sheets likely caused a massive sea level change during the Late Cretaceous period -- an interval previously thought to be ice-free. They said the finding shows either ice sheets grew and decayed during a greenhouse period of Earth's history or current understanding of sea level mechanisms is fundamentally flawed.

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The cores indicated sea level dropped more nearly 100 feet and the process took anywhere from from thousands of years to about a million years during the Late Cretaceous, which lasted from 99 million to 65 million years ago. The perplexing thing, the scientists said, is such large and rapid sea-level changes occurred during an era when planetary temperatures were supposed to be too warm to support polar ice caps.

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