Henk Brinkhuis

With my research, I want to learn from the past in order to predict the climate of the future. To do this, I examine ancient microscopic fossils from the ocean floor. These are dinoflagellates, single-celled algae that live in both salt and fresh water. Some of them go through a resting phase, forming a cyst. These cysts are almost indestructible and can be preserved for a very long time. This allows us to determine which species once coexisted in a particular area, up to 2.5 billion years ago. It applies to both the sea and fresh water: cysts from lakes and rivers have been washed into the sea and can therefore also be found in the sea floor.