ByJoanna Thompsonpublished1 day ago

Geometric fossils in marine sediments have a story to tell.

https://www.livescience.com/ghost-nannofossils-ocean-acidification

The images show the impressions of a collapsed cell-wall covering (a coccosphere) on the surface of a fragment of ancient organic matter (left) with the individual plates (coccoliths) enlarged to show the exquisite preservation of sub-micron-scale structures (right). The blue image is inverted to give a virtual fossil cast, (i.e., to show the original three-dimensional form). The original plates have been removed from the sediment by dissolution, leaving behind only the ghost imprints.(Image credit: S.M. Slater/P. Bown/Science)

Ghostly imprints of tiny plankton-like creatures have been found haunting the sediments of prehistoric oceans at a time when such organisms were thought to be extinct. The so-called nannofossil imprints reveal that the organisms survived acidic oceans caused by climate change, and could offer a clue for how modern creatures can endure rising ocean temperatures, researchers…