A new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science reveals that iron-rich dust from the Sahara Desert becomes more biologically available to marine organisms as it travels across the Atlantic Ocean.

Massive, migrating dust clouds originating in the Sahara Desert are crucial to fostering life in the Atlantic Ocean as far away as the Amazonian basin, according to new evidence from an international team of researchers. This source of biodiversity, however, becomes particularly useful after traveling thousands of miles in the atmosphere.

Iron carried in clouds of Saharan dust blown across the Atlantic Ocean is increasingly available to tiny life forms the further it travels.