To test the resilience of the Coccolithophores, scientists took live samples
and put them in tanks of ocean water.
Since Coccolithophores are“carbon fixers” that take carbon dioxide out of the environment,
some scientists and engineers proposed using them as a solution to global emissions and climate change, Eagle said.
Finding out how Coccolithophores reacted to changes in prehistoric climates could
give scientists better vision of what may happen as our contemporary climate changes in decades and centuries to come.
Scaling up an operation that would use Coccolithophores to make a global impact would present
not just technological hurdles, but could negatively impact oceans in ways that are hard to predict.
But Coccolithophores, a single-celled plankton,
have an outsized effect on oceans due to their sheer quantity- their blooms are visible from space- and because of the fundamental role they play in food chains and the carbon cycle.
Because of their place at the bottom of food chains, Eagle said, major shifts in the numbers and location of Coccolithophores would likely affect creatures higher up-
all the way to apex predators- which all depend on the single-celled creatures, directly or indirectly, for sustenance.