Our studio guest this week is Prof. Gert Wörheide, Munich University.   He will present new knowledge on a completely overlooked and unique marine biodiversity and new genetic resources to promote a further understanding of ecology. DW-TV: One of principle investigators conducting the study who just recently returned from that three-week expedition joins us now in the studio... Professor Gert Wörheide, a geobiologist from the University of Munich, we thank you very much for joining us. First I’d like to begin with what exactly is a 'geobiologist'? Gert Wörheide: A geobiologist is a scientist who works at the interface between geosciences and biosciences, basically applies biological methods ... to infer processes in the past. OK, now you've just returned from this project in the Coral Sea, what makes that region of special interest in geological and biological terms? In terms of geology it's very interesting because the area where we were working on the Queensland Plateau, which is about a hundred nautical miles off the Great Barrier Reef, separated very early from the Australian continent and has been marine all the time, even during sea-level changes and we expected a very ancient living fossil fauna there that has survived since the Mesozoic, since the time of the dinosaurs basically. OK, and how are your discoveries important, which scientific questions can they help clarify? So basically the first question that we were addressing is: are those animals really there? How do the communities look like and why were they so stable over the last millions of years? And which animals were there and what is their ecology? OK, and you've brought a few things to show us today. I'm going to lift these and try not to drop them, because I know they're very valuable and old! Can you tell me what I'm holding in my hand? So this is a fossil nautilus and this is from the Jurassic period, from the time of the dinosaurs, more than a hundred million years ag...