(CNN) — The unexpected discovery of “ghost” fossils belonging to tiny, ancient organisms could provide insights about how life reacts to climate change in Earth’s oceans.
Looking through a powerful microscope, researchers were stunned to see the impressions left by single-celled plankton, or fossilized nannoplankton, that lived millions of years ago — especially since they were analyzing something else.
A study detailing the findings published Thursday in the journal Science.
“The discovery of the ghost fossils was a complete surprise,” said study author Sam Slater, researcher at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.
“We were actually studying fossil pollen from the same rocks. I had never seen this style of fossil preservation before, and the discovery was doubly surprising because the imprints were found in abundance from rocks where normal nannofossils are rare or missing entirely.”
As the researchers examined the pollen under a scanning electron microscope, they spied “tiny potholes” on the surface of the pollen, Slater said. When they zoomed in to see the potholes using magnifications of thousands of times, they observed complex structures.
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