I think I told you that Kiwis eat bugs didn’t I?  Well on the JR they study a tiny tiny kind of fossil called microfossils.  The nickname for these fossils is "bugs". 

The scientist with me in the picture is Takeshi Ohi.  He is from Japan and he studies only the tiny fossils which lived on the bottom of the sea.  A different scientist studies the ones that lived floating in the ocean.

I don’t want to eat these bugs!  They are too crunchy.  They are so tiny you can’t see them unless you use a microscope.   They are made out of the same thing seashells you find on the beach are made of.  It’s called calcite.

These tiny fossils can help the scientists figure out many things.  They can tell us how old the rocks are.  Even how deep the water was and how warm or cold the water was.  Who knew that bugs were good for something besides a bedtime snack!