Sclerochronologist:
Sclerochronology is the study of periodic physical and chemical features in the hard tissues of animals that grow by accretion, including invertebrates and coralline red algae, and the temporal context in which they formed. It is particularly useful in the study of marine paleoclimatology. The term was coined in 1974 following pioneering work on nuclear test atolls by Knutson and Buddemeier and comes from the three Greek words skleros (hard), chronos (time) and logos (science), which together refer to the use of the hard parts of living organisms to order events in time. It is, therefore, a form of stratigraphy. Sclerochronology focuses primarily upon growth patterns reflecting annual, monthly, fortnightly, tidal, daily, and sub-daily (ultradian) increments of time. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “The oldest animal ever found could reveal whether a crucial ocean current will collapse,” Sarah Kaplan, WaPo:
Sclerochronologists — scientists who tell time through shells and bones — can’t take credit for discovering that clams are astute record keepers. That honor goes to Aristotle, who in fourth century B.C. observed that lines on the animals’ shells represented a year’s worth of growth.
But it wasn’t until the last few decades that researchers realized they could use those lines to learn about the history of the ocean, much the way they use tree rings to understand past temperature and weather on land.
