It relies on proxy measurements taken from things like marine fossils or ice cores that offer a physical record of past temperature.

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It relies on proxy measurements taken from things such as marine fossils or ice cores that offer a physical record of past temperature.

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His approach relies on a statistical technique invented in 1943 by a British statistician, Ronald Fisher, and now widely used by geologists and ecologists to estimate the diversity of populations (of, say, fossils or beetles).

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Wind power (about 2.4% of the total) offers the only prospect for any significant growth, and has a long way to go in replacing fossils, or nuclear (about 20%).

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We turn out to know a lot, for instance, about certain species of dinosaurs, he points out, not be cause they are the most important or exceptional, but because their fossils have been easy to collect.

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He said the variation was due to the type of limestone the fossils were excavated from, which can reduce the level of detail - or resolution - of the specimens.

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