SYDNEY, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Seaweed was a major form of storage for carbon dioxide more than a billion years ago and could become a significant environmental factor again to help fight climate change, according to an Australian research.

Studies on the storage of carbon in coastal vegetation have traditionally focused on flowering plants such as mangroves, which is known to help capture the climate change-causing greenhouse gas, but seaweed could also be a main "carbon sink", University of Technology Sydney research findings showed on Wednesday.

Evidence of the "significant role" of seaweed in the marine organic carbon storage is growing, according to university researcher John Raven, who compared the environmental data of the common ocean algae with mangroves, salt marshes and other major organisms.

The latest research suggests that seaweed was a major contributor to the storage of organic carbon produced by coastal vegetation "from more than a billion years ago to the origin of marine flowering plants less than 200 million years ago" and could do so again "today and into the future", the Royal Society scientific organization said in a statement.

Further analysis of marine and coastal carbon storage should include seaweed "to trace organic carbon from source to sink", according to Raven.