Under the microscope of the Determination ocean drill ship, the reporter encountered a group of beautiful foraminifera (pictured) that lived in the South China Sea 400,000 years ago, which is the third ongoing South China Sea ocean drill, drilling scientific samples from the bottom of the South China Sea.
Life in the South China Sea at that time must have been happy and prosperous. Because despite 400,000 years, every fossil foraminifera still emits a warm luster like a white pearl. Some of them resemble round ping-pong balls, but the skin is meshed on closer inspection; some are like cotton balls with buds ready to bloom, and the white petals are clearly visible; and some are like scalloped shells, wrapped in a small hole in the middle. Under the illumination of the microscope, it is exquisite and clear, like a smiling face oncoming face.
These beautiful single-celled animals, which are only 1 millimeter in size, have lived on Earth for more than 500 million years since the Cambrian Period. They have lived and died on the ocean for generations. Their families are thriving, diverse, widely distributed, and extremely sensitive to marine environmental factors; some populations evolve rapidly and survive on Earth for a short time, making them important standardized stones for corresponding geological ages and "bookmarks" for scientists to study earth's history.
The third ocean drilling in the South China Sea, led by Chinese scientists, is proceeding smoothly in the northern waters of the South China Sea at 18 degrees north latitude and 115 degrees east longitude. What age did the "Determination" ocean drill ship drill a tube of sedimentary samples from the bottom of the South China Sea at a depth of more than 3700 meters? Beautiful foraminifera have their own "say".
On the 16th, Xiang Rong, a researcher from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found several pink "red coccidiosis" in the third tube sedimentary sample drilled by the "Determination". This foraminifera, which is used as a dating marker in textbooks, lived on Earth about 120,000-400,000 years ago. Therefore, it can be judged that the third tube of South China Sea sedimentary samples drilled by "Determination" was deposited during this time.
Although to the naked eye, foraminifera are as small as the tip of a needle, they are not microorganisms, but are uncompromising animals belonging to the protozoal kingdom Granulostomycete phylum Foraminifera, with one or more openings in the shell in order to protrude pseudopods, hence the name "foraminifera". Studying the species, number and distribution of foraminifera in the ocean today, and summarizing its relationship with the environmental factors in which it is located, scientists can infer the paleocean marine environment and paleoclimate. According to Xinhua News Agency