Research shows the North Atlantic became less salty as it grew

(Phys.org) --The water in a 35-million-year-old impact crater beneath Chesapeake Bay, an estuary off the Atlantic Coast of North America, is twice as salty as ocean water, according to a study by Ward E. Sanford and his colleagues at the US Geological Survey (USGS). The research, which appears in Nature, shows that the water in the crater is a remnant of seawater from the Early Cretaceous Period. Sanford and his team believe that the North Atlantic's transition from a closed rift basin to an ope...