They can dig a sea-floor core and look for older specimens. They might be fossilized. (I'm not sure if fossils of such animals are possible, and I'm not sure they can operate a dig that deep.)
"They can dig a sea-floor core and look for older specimens. They might be fossilized. (I'm not sure if fossils of such animals are possible, and I'm not sure they can operate a dig that deep.)"
A sea floor core is technically possibly, but very difficult at that depth. The bugs are "soft shelled", so a fossil is possible, but highly unlikely. Think of a foram as a single celled snail. Hard shelled forams are very common fossils.
I've heard that even extracting and preserving the top samples from that depth is quite difficult.