SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Ancient Coral Points to Another Disastrous Tsunami
from the Times (London)
The eastern Indian Ocean could be due for another earthquake rivalling the one that caused the deadly tsunami in December 2004, according to research on ancient corals in the area.
It has long been said that earthquakes occur in cycles, yet until now evidence has been hard to come by. Now a pioneering study of the corals off the west coast of Sumatra has revealed that the region's earthquakes during the past 700 years occurred in series of shocks that spanned decades.
Corals lay down growth rings every year, just like trees, and these record environmental changes including upheavals of the seabed. They show that the region's earthquakes usually come in a sequence. An international team, led by Kerry Sieh, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, analysed cross-sections of ancient corals growing off the Sumatran Mentawai islands ...
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