It took a microscope to help unlock an ancient seaweed secret. Paleontologists with Virginia Tech announced the discovery of one-billion-year-old seaweed fossils, and suggested the tiny remnants may have ancestral ties to modern land plants we know and love.
The green seaweed is a kind of algae called Proterocladus antiquus. The minuscule fossil shown in a Virginia Tech microscope image is about the size of a flea and comes from northern China.
