An astonishing new study suggests that influence on our orbit by Jupiter and Venus may have a profound impact on the Earth’s climate and life forms. The study found that every 405,000 years, Earth’s orbit around the sun shifts from circular to slightly elliptical, and then switches back, and scientists think it is due to a gravitational influence from Jupiter and Venus that still affects our planet today.

Scientists have noted this pattern for at least the last 215 million years and possible longer. And researchers have been able to tie this shift to changes in the climate, the environment, and even to dinosaurs and mammals and fossils. They were able to make this discovery by analyzing sesdiments in New Jersey and Arizona.

The rocks there had similar patterns in terms of reverals in the Earth’s magnetic field, and they appeared to correlate with the 405,000 year cycle that scientists have been studying. Every 405,000 years, for example, summers get hopper when orbital eccentricity is at its most extreme.

“It’s an astonishing result because this long cycle, which had been predicted from planetary motions through about 50 million years ago, has been confirmed through at least 215 million years ago,” said lead author Dennis V. Kent, a Board of Governors professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, in a statement. “Scientists can now link changes in the climate, environment, dinosaurs, mammals and fossils around the world to this 405,000-year cycle in a very precise way.”