A team of biologists working at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a research museum in the Netherlands, has found evidence of caddisfly larvae using microplastics to build their casings as far back as the 1970s.
I wonder if microplastics can be found in older samples as well. Do microplastics predate industrialization? Not saying this is likely, but maybe we’re seeing something that was always there.
I wonder if microplastics can be found in older samples as well. Do microplastics predate industrialization? Not saying this is likely, but maybe we’re seeing something that was always there.
What we know is that they easily migrate into older sediment layers, so being less useful as dating markers.