{"id":1371,"date":"2014-04-10T16:47:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T21:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2014-05-02T16:55:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T21:55:25","slug":"million-year-old-plankton-comes-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/million-year-old-plankton-comes-back-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Million-year-old plankton comes back to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Left:The<\/a>

Left:The ancient plankton Dapsilidinium pastielsii, previously thought to be extinct, hatched from hard-shelled cysts like this one, which is 45 mictometres across, about the size of a speck of dust. Right: the swimming plankton that hatched from the cyst in the lab. (Photo credit: Mertens et al., 2014)<\/p><\/div>\n

Scientists have recovered a form of plankton thought to be extinct for a million years. It is the only surviving member of a plankton lineage common 50 million years ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

The heat-loving, single-celled organism <\/span>Dapsilidinium pastielsii<\/span> was thought to have disappeared from the fossil record because of colder ocean temperatures. However, a group of researchers recently recovered cysts – hard-shelled forms of the plankton, comparable to seeds or spores – from sediments in the \u201cIndo-Pacific Warm Pool\u201d off coasts from Japan to Indonesia. In the lab, these cysts hatched into living plankton. <\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers speculate that as ocean temperatures warm, the plankton may once again spread beyond its present refuge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0Geology<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>on\u00a0April 10, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Martin Head<\/a>, Brock University, Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Scientists have recovered a form of plankton thought to be extinct for a million years. It is the only surviving member of a plankton lineage common 50 million years ago. The heat-loving, single-celled organism Dapsilidinium pastielsii was thought to have disappeared from the fossil record because of colder ocean temperatures. However, a group of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[174,113,31,215,917,1282,1281,50,1280],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-animals","tag-biology","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-evolution","tag-extinct","tag-life","tag-ontario","tag-organism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Dinoflagellates-3.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-m7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}