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The Muds of Time

Sediment accumulating on the bottom of the sea carries in it clues to the past, in the form of tiny shells, chemical compounds, and isotopes of elements that reflect climate and ocean conditions in a chronological layer-cake. This tool, the multi-corer, extracts cylindrical cores of ocean-bottom mud that extend from the present (the mud’s surface) back in time, which researchers store and analyze in WHOI’s Seafloor Samples Laboratory.
(Photo by Mary Carman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)