Gill discusses Mount Everest with Live Science for Earth Day article
Live Science interviewed Jacquelyn Gill, an associate professor of terrestrial paleoecology at the University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology and the Climate Change Institute, for the article “Why celebrate Earth Day? Here are 12 reasons.” Scientists interviewed for the article shared amazing facts about the planet for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Gill discussed Mount Everest. “The top of Mount Everest is limestone from an ancient ocean floor formed 470 million years ago — before life had even left the ocean! I love this fact, because it reminds us of the tremendous changes our Earth has gone through to bring us to this moment in time, from mass extinctions to asteroid impacts and vast movements of the very ground we stand on. Just as humans are one small speck in a vast universe (thanks, Carl Sagan!), so too are we a tiny blip of time in the long arc of Earth’s history,” she said.