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• n  the aggregate of small plant and animal organisms that float or drift in great numbers in fresh or salt water

• Plankton, by contrast, are preserved in ocean sediments.
• Those same conditions have also created an abundance of plankton a cornucopia of nutrition that the shellfish have gorged on.
• The seas of the world are inhabited by innumerable billions of tiny, drifting organisms called plankton.

News & Articles

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• Three-billion-year-old microfossils include plankton
  Spindle-shaped inclusions in three-billion-year-old rocks are microfossils of plankton that probably inhabited the oceans around the globe during that time, according to scientists.
  June 6, 2013 - Science Daily
• 3 billion-year-old microfossils include plankton
  Spindle-shaped inclusions in 3 billion-year-old rocks are microfossils of plankton that probably inhabited the oceans around the globe during that time, according to an international team of researchers.
  June 6, 2013 - EurekAlert!
• UMaine researchers take part in Arctic expedition
  UMaine researchers take part in Arctic expedition Two professors and two graduate students from the School of Marine Sciences are participating in the Tara Oceans Polar Circle Expedition 2013 to investigate Arctic planktonic ecosystems in the context of climate change. About 40 scientists from 11 countries are taking turns aboard the schooner Tara, sampling plankton as the vessel circumnavigates ...
  June 6, 2013 - San Francisco Chronicle

Quotes

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• Sigourney Weaver in AFP
  Scientists fear many organisms may not survive so radical a shift in chemistry,Weaver said. "And some of those organisms -- certain plankton and corals, for instance -- form the foundation of ocean food webs. If they perish, what happens...
• Ian Rankin in New York Times
  Rebus knew his place in the food chain: somewhere down among the plankton, the price for years of insubordination and reckless conduct,Mr. Rankin writes in "The Naming of the Dead."
• Leonard Herzenberg in NBC 11.com
  It is an awfully good feeling to open almost any scientific journal and find articles referencing the FACS technology,Herzenberg said. "It's even being used to analyze plankton from the depths of the ocean and to perform experiments on the...