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Tiny Time Machines

Seafloor sediments are full of tiny shells like these, the remains of single-celled ocean organisms that lived, died, and sank to the ocean bottom, building up in layers over the ages. The fossil shells (seen under a microscope) contain chemical clues to the ocean temperature and atmospheric chemistry in the location and time that the organisms lived. Former MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Fern Gibbons studied the shells to learn about patterns of monsoons in the Indian Ocean during thousands of years, part of WHOI research on past ocean climate. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)