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"Focusing on the planet's past, the two marine biologists note that throughout the early to middle Holocene (from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago), extratropical North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were 2-3°C warmer than at present (Balsam, 1981; Ruddiman and Mix, 1991), and that reefs dominated by staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) were common along the east coast of Florida as far north as Palm Beach County (Lighty et al., 1978). In addition, they note that this period "correlates with maximal coral diversity at the northernmost position of coral reefs in the Pacific," and that "evidence from both terrestrial and coastal habitats shows that warming during this millennial-scale, high-amplitude climate flicker caused many species from a variety of ecosystems to expand their ranges northwards (COHMAP, 1988; Delcourt and Delcourt, 1991; Dahlgren et al., 2000)." Of particular interest, in this regard, they note that "Veron's (1992) study of a mid-Holocene fossil reef at Tateyama [the world's highest latitude Pacific coral reef] showed that even a brief period of warming of only 2°C doubled species richness from 35 to 72 species at the latitudinal extreme of extant corals.""
