14 DAY TRIAL // A study suggests that the formation and evolution of coral atolls is a rather complex process, and that Charles Darwin was partly wrong when developing his theory on the matter at hand.
Long story short, back in 1842, Charles Darwin announced that, according to his investigations, coral atolls (i.e. coral reefs shaped like rings) formed when an island started to sink beneath the surface of the sea.
Since coral reefs are basically colonies made up of countless small animals that can only grow and thrive when having access to sunlight, Charles Darwin concluded that they most likely stretched towards the sun while the island slowly made its way below the sea's surface.
Darwin also stated that such atolls had a thickness of several thousand feet, and by the looks of it, this part he did get right, Live Science informs us.
Thus, investigations carried out in the years to come proved this bit of the theory correct back in 1953.
However, specialists now say that an island's beginning to sink below the sea's surface is by no means the sole phenomenon that need be held accountable for the formation of coral atolls.
Quite the contrary: changes in sea levels and sea temperatures brought about by glacial cycles have a very important say in the matter at hand.
More precisely, they are now said to be the primary cause for the formation of coral atolls.
“Darwin actually got it mostly right, which is pretty amazing. However, there’s one part Darwin missed. He didn't know about these glacially induced sea-level cycles,” Taylor Perron, currently working as a geologist at MIT, reportedly argued.
“You can explain a lot of the variety you see just by combining these various processes — the sinking of islands, the growth of reefs, and the last few million years of sea level going up and down rather dramatically,” the specialist further said.
A detailed account of this investigation and its findings is made available to the public in the May 9 issue of the journal Geology.