From The Independent:
“During the initial shipboard assessments, the unusual colouration of the sediment layer quickly caught our attention; it clearly differed from the layers above it,” said study co-author Dr Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
They said the 90-million-year-old soil is so well preserved it contains countless traces of pollen, spores, remnants of flowering plants and the researchers could even make out individual cell structures.