How to get and collect foraminifera ?

It is not difficult to get foraminifera. Pick them at the beach or extract them from sedimentary rock.

Online is now a detailed description how to do it, from sampling in the field, extraction, picking, identifying to building a collection. So far it is only available in German :)

Go to www.foraminifera.eu/probenauf.html

Tell us about your experience.

5500 images in the database

Our image database surpasses 5500 images.

After 4 years of existence our image database has grown substantially due to the great support of contributors and the highly motivated team. 2012(+2011) we achieved so far our goal to add 4 images a day. To keep the webpage still maneuverable we created different database queries and graphical interfaces

Database Queries:
www.foraminifera.eu/querydb.php
www.foraminifera.eu/taxo.php

Interfaces:
genus: www.foraminifera.eu/AtoC.php
locality: www.foraminifera.eu/locality.html
fossil-record: http://www.foraminifera.eu/foraminifera-fossil-record.html

Please tell us what we should improve and consider to contribute your images.

The locality-interface allowing to choose localities by clicking on the circels on the map covers all oceans. (Example North Atlantic / Western Mediterranean:

Fossil Foraminifera from the South Yellow Sea

Gallitellia

Feifei Wang from the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology in Qingdao, China has contributed 77 images of foraminifera. They lived on the seafloor of the South Yellow Sea in the Late Quaternary.

See all the images at www.foraminifera.eu/sys.php

Maastrichtian Foraminifera Working Group

Bolivinoides draco draco The Foraminifera.eu Working Group "Maastrichtian Foraminifera" has started to operate.

A Maastrichtian sample from a core-drill from Hemmoor, Northern Germany has been processed. Stefan Raveling who provided the sample did also the washing, sieving and optical imaging. SEM-imaging was done by Dr. Rosenfeldt and Michael Hesemann.

First 60 images are online at www.foraminifera.eu/hemmoor.php The material is corroded but still shows important details and ornamentation to identify single specimens.

The Working Group "Maastrichtian Foraminifera" will continue to work on this sample, samples from the Laegerdorf Quarry, also Northern Germany and from a drill-core from the Baltic Sea. Other Maastrichtian material is welcome and the group is open for more members. In case of interest you may contact us via email: michael [at] foraminifera.eu

It is planned to meet in November 2012 on a Saturday in Hamburg, Germany to discuss the project and single species. The results will be used for the related "Index Foraminifera Cretaceous" Project.


Ramulina wrightii

579 Forams from Greece on a single slide

The huge foram collection of coworker Karl-Otto Bock is housed in single plummercell-slides, where forams are neatly arranged in single fields. We have started to put his collection online with this plummercell slide. It is filled primarily with miliolid specimens found at the beach of Malia on Crete - a Greece island. The single fields are clickable and are integrated into the foraminifera.eu database.



To see more follow the link and click on the single fields of the

Plummercell slide from Malia, Crete

.

Up for discussion: a new concept for the GENUS PAGES

For each genus we want to create a page with a short text-description and illustrations of the type species. Thus we hope to clarify the specifics of each genus. Below of the general description we show images and drawings of the species for this genus. Above you see as an example the genus page of Globorotalia Cushman, 1927. As we have illustrations for more than 450 genera, it will take months to add all descriptions and type species.

The new concept includes the notion, whether the classification is reviewed by a scientist or not. Anyhow as concepts of genera and species differ from author to author and in the course of time everybody needs to make up his/her own mind. Primarily we show images and drawings, which have an enduring value and secondly addressed names and classifications, which are changing. Reference for our classification and thus further reading is given on each single page.

Any comment on this new concept is welcome.

Michael
Foraminifera.eu Project

some more Genus Pages following the new concept:

Botellina
Elphidium
Globorotalia
Hyperammina
Protobotellina

Pleistocene Sample indicating 450m lift

A sample from the Peloritani mountains in the northeastern part of Sicily, Italy indicates that the terrain has been lifted by 450m or more within only 1,8 Mio. years since the early Pleistocene.

The material is taken from the Salice Outcrop lying today at 340m above sealevel. It contains several Globorotalia inflata, which first appeared in the latest Pliocene/Early Pleistocene. Geological studies place the Salice outcrop into the Early Pleistocene spanning from 1,8-0,8 million years BC.

Read more at www.foraminifera.eu/meditsalice.html



The sample contains about 40% planktonic foraminiferal tests, which indicate water-depth of at least 100m at the time of deposition. Studies carried out in different parts of recent oceans proof a strong correlation between water-depth and share of planktonic foraminiferal tests in the sediment.

Read more at www.foraminifera.eu/medit01.html

any question ? ask michael [at] foraminifera.eu

Workshop Micropaleontology 10/11. September

the lectures will be in german only, practical instructions are available in english.

Workshop Mikropaläontologie in Hamburg, Germany
10/11. September 2011, der AG Mikropaläontologie
im Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein Hamburg und foraminifera.eu-Projekt



Samstag, den 10.9.2011
10:00 – 11:00 Begrüßung, Vorstellungsrunde, Erwartungen, Organisatorisches, Ausgabe
Arbeitsmaterial, Aufbau Mikroskope …
partial view
11:00 – 12:00 Vortrag Einführung in die Mikropaläontologie und ihre Arbeitsmethoden mit Diskussion

12:00 – 13.00 Bearbeitung rezenter Proben aus dem Mittelmeer, Kreide aus Lägerdorf, Kennenlernen typischer Vertreter, Nutzung der Literatur für Bestimmungen, Belegung des REM-Tellers

13:00 – 14:00 Mittagspause

14:00 – 15:00 Vortrag Foraminiferen und ihre Nutzung bei der Erdölförderung und für Umweltanalysen mit Diskussion

15:00 – 17:00 Bearbeitung Sternberger Gestein auf Foraminiferen und Bestimmung der Funde, Sichtung sortierter Plummerzellen mit 100+ Arten, Belegung des REM-Tellers

17:00 – 17:30 Schlussrunde
optional ab 19:30 Uhr gemeinsames Abendessen

Sonntag, den 11.9.2011
10:00 – 10:45 Vortrag Radiolarien mit Diskussion

10:45 – 11:30 Bearbeitung Tiefseeprobe Antarktis auf Radiolarien und Foraminiferen, Nutzung der Bestimmungsliteratur, Belegung des REM-Tellers

11:30 – 12:00 Vortrag Fotografie und REM

12:00 – 14:00 Aufnahme des REM-Tellers mit dem REM und Fertigung von optischen Fotos
In Gruppen zu 3-5 Personen, dazwischen Mittag nach Bedarf

14:00 – 14:30 Schlussrunde / offizielles Ende

14:30 – 17:00 Individuelle Beratung nach Bedarf

Costs:
Adult 25 Euro, accompanying Children under 18 free,

Each participant will get
5 samples and SEM-images from the samples processed during the workshop , Print "Göke: Einführung in die Foraminiferen, Radiolarien und Diatomeen."
The equipment will be provided during the workshop (for each participant a binocular, picking devices ...)

Register till 31st. of July 2011 by sending an email to: michael [at] foraminifera.eu. Please note, that about 22 places are available.

Forams2010

From 5th till 10th of September 2010 the Foram-World met in Bonn. 374 professional foraminiferologist plus 1 amateur (=me) met in Bonn to learn more about newest scientific results about foraminifera and their applications. Martin Langer and his team did an excellent job in organizing this event as a vivid platform for scientific and personal exchange. The opportunity was given to everbody to present his/her work as an oral and/or poster presentation. During poster sessions no oral sessions were running. The resulting richness of the scientific input is reflected in the reader of Forams2010 with more abstracts than participants.

My poster presentation

from Sunday till Tuesday was well visited by about 50 persons with 15 wanting to contribute mainly images and minilectures. Online now (8.9.) went the Short Treatise on foraminiferology offered by Bruno Granier on the 6.9. with the integration of all single images still under way. A cooperation with the eforams-project (Jaroslav Tyszka) is agreed, with foraminifera.eu as a plattform to pre-present new, not yet accepted species. Feedback: Via internet people tend to be very polite avoiding any criticsm, which is needed though to move on in a project like foraminifera.eu. So I took the chance to ask for feedback. As one result I will add an FAQ to answer the many questions. "What happens to my contribution, when you are run over by a truck ? Who finances all this ? Is your plan to add 10.000 Ammonias as they will be in many samples ? Who is reviewing the classifications ? How may I send my images ?

Imaging:

With Thomas Cedhagen, Miroslav Bubik and an unfortunately to me unknown retired lady from Shell I intensively talked about imaging, stacking, digitalizing of collections and the importance of drawings. Bob Jones will ask the NHML on the permission to use their scans of the Brady Challenger Expedition drawings. See a first image of Lituotuba lituiformis, taken from a different publication as indicated :)

Meeting with contributors + Urbino 09 course participants.

It was a great pleasure to meet some of the first scientific contributors, for the first time Irina Polovodova and now twice since Urbino 2009 Renata Moura Mello, Ekaterina Ovsepyan and Claudia Cetean. Alltogether 9 Urbino 2009 participants were present and presenting their work.

Field trip to the chalk-quarry Laegerdorf

In July our small group of hobby-micropaleontologists heads to the chalk-quarry Laegerdorf near Hamburg: doors are open, it its collectors Sunday. While our macropaleontological colleagues are already busy with their heavy equipment and first findings of belemnites are reported we discuss the stratigrafical setting:





















We soon skip our plan to match stratigrafical maps in the literature with sampling in the quarry. We do a chronological sampling and hope, that the micropaleontological content will tell us more.










After 7 hours of continous sampling we have 15 bags of 500g. Mircofossils are not observable, with a magnifying glas: 0,00.
What have you got ? is the question of our colleagues with the buckets full of belemnits, starfish, sponges ...
Yeah , oh my god - us ? - we don't know ...

Our field trip starts back home. After cleaning, washing, sieving of 1/3 of the first bag a residue with fraction > 63µm is left:




















In three such spoons we find hundreds of foraminifera and other microfossil specimens. Cleaning needs to be improved though.

Some prominent index foraminifera for the Lower Upper Campanian/ Upper lower Campanian found are these:


Neoflabellina buticula






Stensioeina pommerana







Bolivinoides decoratus (var. decoratus ?)





Learn more about our findings at
Laegerdorf Sample 22

Globorotalia truncatulinoides

Globorotalia truncatulinoides (d'Orbigny, 1839) is a planktic foraminifera.

It tolerates a broad range of sea surface temperatures and salinities and occurs in subtropical and transitional water masses. It is a deep-dwelling species which ascends to shallower depths during its reproduction period in winter. In the fossil record it is since the Pleistocene and may be used for studies on climate change of the last 2 mya.

The relative abundance of dextral coiling is higher at lower latitudes.

The specimens shown here are from a sample from the Hebridian Slope off Scotland in the North Atlantic. Northwest of the British Isles, this steep continental slope to depths greater than 2000 m separates the distinct continental shelf of Europe from the deeper Atlantic Ocean. The sample is in the repository of the Scottish Association for Marine Sciences, Oban.

see more foraminifera found at the Hebridian Slope









Umbilical view of a
dextral coiling specimen
















Spiral View

















more images of Globorotalia truncatulinoides at
Laboratório de Microfósseis Calcários,
Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

Exhibition Foraminifera of Northern Germany

Opening:
Saturday, 7th of August 2010 at 14.00h

Ice Age Museum Lütjenburg/Germany
www.eiszeitmuseum.de

Foraminifera objects
by artist Anna Mandel
www.annamandel.de

Contact me, if you want to organize an exhibition where you are. Michael:
michael [at] foraminifera.eu

More Info

Classical Site: Damery - Fleury-la-Rivière

A classical site for (micro-) paleontological research is the area Damery - Fleury-la-Rivière in the Paris Basin. It is famous for rich fossil beds of Lutetian Age (48.6 - 40.4 mya). In the 19th century pre-evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), the author of many first descriptions of species Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny, Olry Terquem (1797-1886) and others worked on fossil foraminifera of the Paris Basin.

The foraminiferal fauna indicates shallow water, warm marine conditions such as found today in the Red Sea: a great variety, rich ornamented and big foraminifera, a substantial part being Miliolids.






Ornamented Miliolid: Miliola prisca (Terquem, 1882)
















Unornamented, rather large Miliolid: Triloculina trigonula (Lamarck, 1804)

















Trochulina turbo (d'Orbigny, 1826), umbilical side















Trochulina turbo (d'Orbigny, 1826), spiral side













See more images on Fleury-la-Rivière

The sediment-sample was sent by Adrian, Thanks a lot !

Miocene - the genus Florilus

The Miocene epoch lasted from 23.0-5.3 Mya BC and has foraminiferal faunas closely related to recent ones. The genus Florilus is common in Miocene sediments of the shelf. Some authors placed them in Nonion.






Florilus boueanum (d´Orbigny, 1846),
Stade, Germany, Pre North Sea, Middle Miocene

















Florilus boueanum (d´Orbigny, 1846),
Gram, Denmark, Pre North Sea, Miocene








Florilus grateloupi (d´Orbigny, 1826),
Calvert Cliffs Bed 10, Maryland, USA, Miocene











Florilus chesapeakensis Gibson, 1983,
Calvert Cliffs Bed 4-9, Maryland, USA, Miocene

Oligocene foraminifera from Atzendorf, Germany

Prof. Mueller, Geologisch - Palaeontologische Sammlung, University of Leipzig provided a sample from Atzendorf near Stassfurt, Germany. It dates back 30 mya to the Rupelian stage, lower Oligocene. Most foraminifera are small, below 500µm in size and lived benthic. An example is Bolivina fastigia seen to the left. See the whole collection at http://www.foraminifera.eu/atzendorf.html


Some planktonics (well preserved) are found, I classify them as Globigerina globularis (see image to the right. There are several Spiroplectinellas respresenting the agglutinating foraminifera.

I am not much familiar with faunal interpretation, but would interprete from the faunal composition: 5-10% planktonics indicate open waters, which correlate with the overall smaller sized benthonics.