Question: What is your fave sea animal

Daniel Parsons answered on 7 Nov 2014:

As a geologist its a Foraminifera….or Forams for short.

These are found pretty much in all marine environments. They are single celled organisms, which possess a kind of shell. There are billions of them in the ocean and when they die they rain down on the sea floor in vast numbers; where they are eventually preserved in the rocks. Because we are able to tell what temperature of water and what ratios of chemicals make up their shells when they die we can use the forams preserved in rocks formed in the past to both date the rocks and understand what both the temperature of the sea and the properties of earth’s atmosphere was when they died. They are billions of like mini clues into the ancient Earth! See here for more information:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GeolSci/micropal/foram.html