By Sid Perkins
Sediments from the Atlantic Ocean indicate that the now lush Amazon basin was much drier during the last ice age.
Between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, the Amazon River carried little more than half the water that it currently does, says Mark A. Maslin, a geographer at University College London. Maslin and his colleague Stephen J. Burns of the University of Berne in Switzerland presented their findings in the Dec. 22, 2000 Science.
They base their argument on two oxygen isotopes, known as oxygen-18 and oxygen-16, in sediments off the coast of Brazil. Several factors, including water temperature, global ice volume, and the amount of fresh water carried out to sea by the Amazon River, affect the ratio of these isotopes.