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No stick in the mud

Fern Gibbons, a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, extracts a sample of sediments cored from the seafloor. The long, round core is split lengthwise down the middle. The mud—still moist, with a consistency of cake frosting—contains the preserved shells of tiny marine life that sank to the bottom over thousands of years. The shells contain chemical clues that will help Gibbons reconstruct what ocean conditions were like in the past.
(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)