Snails signal a humid Mediterranean

(University of York) An international team of researchers has shown that old wives' tales that snails can tell us about the weather should not be dismissed too hastily.

While the story goes that if a snail climbs a plant or post, rain is coming, research led by the University of York goes one better: it shows snails can provide a wealth of information about the prevailing weather conditions thousands of years ago.

The researchers, including scientists from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC), analysed the chemistry of snail shells dating back 9,000 to 2,500 years recovered from Mediterranean caves, looking at humidity at different times in the past.

Their findings, which are reported in the journal Quaternary International, reveal that when the first farmers arrived in Italy and Spain, the western Mediterranean was not the hot dry place it is now, but warmer, wetter and stickier.

The research was led by Dr André Carlo Colonese from York's Department of Archaeology. [...] eurekalert.org