I have just said goodbye to retired curator Richard Hodgkinson who left the Museum 54 years after taking up a junior position here. His knowledge of the microfossil collection is second to none. Another colleague Andy Currant is about to retire after more than 40 years of service. Can we replace this sort of specialist knowledge? As the curator of a collection of over a million objects that is consulted regularly by scientists, I would argue that specialist curators are vital. Here are 10 points illustrating why.

First I'll start with my definition of a specialist curator. This is someone who has in depth knowledge about the collections in their care, an appreciation of their significance and a working knowledge of the external community likely to use them. Some curators publish research papers on their own areas of expertise but I'm not including that in my definition. Nobody in the world is an expert on the range of subjects that micropalaeontology covers!

1. Databasing
   The million plus items in my collections are unlikely to be databased individually during my lifetime. Some knowledge of the relative importance of different parts of the collection helps decide on priorities so limited databasing resources are used to their best potential. Updating identifications of our specimens is also important so knowing 'who is publishing what' can pay dividends.
2. Conservation
   As with databasing, important decisions need to be made on what needs conserving. Conservation is one of the main remits of the museum and is vital to maintaining the heritage locked up in our collections. Having someone to argue scientifically why something needs conserving helps to prioritise conservation projects.
3. Enquiries
   It's important to provide accurate information to enquirers. While useful information can be gleaned from Museum card indexes and registers, these rarely include historical details. I've been here for 18 years now and have a pretty good feel for the microfossil collections but I still occasionally rely on retired members of staff to point me in the right direction with an interesting anecdote or two.
4. Media
   Some of my fellow curators are always being called on to make statements about news articles related to their subject. Meteorites, human fossils or dinosaurs are in the news every week. These high profile judgements emphasise why the Museum is important and the public expect such authoritive statements from specialists at the Museum. OK I hear you say - micropalaeontology rarely makes it to the news. That is one of the reasons why I decided to start this blog!
5. Loans
   Before our collections are sent out on loan we need to make judgements on their travel suitability and value for insurance purposes. Sometimes loanees want to carry out destructive techniques on the specimens so curators have to advise senior managers about whether these should be allowed.
6. Disaster and risk management
   We know where are most important specimens are so they can be rescued in the event of a disaster (fire, flood, earthquake). You would think a specialist curator is not required if we have lists already. However, I came to work last Monday morning to find my second floor office and part of the collections area outside flooded. This is strange because I am two floors below the roof! Knowledge of the collections present in the affected cabinets was vital to quickly dealing with the issue. Some people think that databasing all our collections is the answer to replacing specialist curators but this would not have helped in this instance.
7. Acquisitions
   Should we acquire a collection or not? Knowledge of collectors and their history is useful as is knowledge of the site where it was collected. My experience is that having a specialist on the books also encourages donations. Specialists build up relationships with potential donors, enhancing the value of the present collections by encouraging new donations.
8. Exchanges and disposals
   These follow the same principles as acquisitions but in reverse. I've heard several horror stories over the years where collections or specimen related documentation have ended up on the skip because the people disposing of them had no idea of their value. Many curators can't bear to think that their collections should be disposed of or exchanged. However, these projects are neccessary so some knowledge of value is essential before disposal decisions are made.
9. Visits
   People come from all over the world to visit our collections sometimes at vast personal expense. Before planning a trip they need to know for certain that we have collections that suit their specialist needs. Sometimes we need to encourage use of our collections from relevant external stakeholders. I am glad that my colleagues Tom and Steve have been brought in specifically to help me with this remit.
10. Education
    Educational activities include roadshows like the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, public speaking e.g. Nature Live or input to displays in the galleries of the Museum. Without specialist knowledge, specimens can be poorly interpreted or interesting stories not brought to public attention. All of these activities make the specimens more relevant to members of the public.

So you can tell that as a specialist curator I'm in favour of them. No surprise there. I'm not criticising non-specialists either. In these days of austerity, curatorial support is becoming stretched increasingly thinly and staff expected to cover wider subject areas. The days of a person like Richard Hodgkinson staying their entire career in one museum job on one subject may be over but it does not pay to overlook the importance of specialist curatorial knowledge.

If you are interested to join in the discussion on this subject, my colleague Dr Tim Ewin is taking part in a question and answer session entitled "In defence of the curator" at the Open Culture event on 27th June at the Kia Oval in London.

Making a reference collection, taking high quality images of key species, identifying them and publishing the images on the web and in peer reviewed scientific articles are all ways in which expertise can be locked up in the Museum collections. NHM Scientific Associate Tim Potter has been doing just this during his time at the Museum. He studies acritarchs which are an enigmatic group of organic plankton that are present in marine rocks up to 3 billion years old.

Some Lower Palaeozoic acritarch images created by Museum Scientific Associate Tim Potter. In general acritarchs range from about 5 to 200 micro meters.

Although we don't know exactly what acritarchs are (the name means unknown origin), they are very important organisms as many are probably primary producers and therefore could be responsible for generating oceanic organic carbon in some of the earliest oceans including the Cambrian Period roughly 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was an exciting time for the development of life with many strange organisms arriving and subsequently becoming extinct during the 'Cambrian Explosion' of life. Like many microfossil groups, the acritarchs have potential for dating rocks and subsequently the timing of some of these important events.

Acritarchs can also tell us about conditions in some of these ancient oceans; periods of glaciation and major oceanic carbon fluctuations are known to have occurred. Carbon isotopic studies of rocks suggest that the global carbon cycle was disrupted in the late Cambrian about 500 million years ago with increased carbon in the oceans at this time. This is referred to as the SPICE event but the link between this event and acritarch diversity is yet to be proven.

Tim studied acritarchs of Cambrian age for his PhD prior to a long career with Shell. After retiring he decided to publish the findings of his thesis and came to the museum to update his identifications using the amazing resources we hold like the John Williams Index of Palaeopalynology. In February, Tim published a key paper on acritarchs with co-authors Susanne Feist-Burkhardt and Museum PhD student Brian Pedder, expanding on work done by Brian for his masters project.

Tim Potter, Brian Pedder and Susanne Feist-Burkhardt lined up by chance 'in publication name order' in the Welsh Borderland during a collecting trip for acritarchs.

Back in 2007, Tim, Susanne, Brian and myself carried out fieldwork specifically to collect samples to fill gaps in the Museum acritarch collections and to support Museum research that was being undertaken at the time. This fieldwork covered classic sites in the Lower Palaeozoic of the Welsh Borderland from the Cambrian to Silurian periods roughly 500-420 million years ago.

Tim Potter collecting a sample from the bottom of a stream near Comley, Shropshire. There are very few exposures of Cambrian rocks in the world and in the UK you have to search hard to find potential sampling sites. This is not an uncommon situation for Lower Palaeozoic fieldwork in the Welsh Borderland!

To obtain acritarchs from the rock samples collected, laboratory processing using nasty acids like hydroflouric acid is neccessary. It is not a particularly strong acid but it is deadly as it dissolves pretty much everything apart from the organic constituents of rocks. Splash a bit on yourself and you would not last long! A laboratory with special fume cupboards and much protective clothing is neccessary for processing samples safely. Fortunately for Tim, these samples were expertly prepared by technician Jonah Chitolie.

Once processed, the residues were analysed by Tim and single specimens picked out so that they could be mounted and viewed on glass slides. Because the specimens are so small, this is a particularly fiddly technique that requires a lot of patience. Most slides of acritarchs are strew mounts; a small amount of processed organic sample is pressed and cemented between two glass slides using resins like Canada Balsam. For these types of slides, an assemblage is preserved rather than a single indentifable specimen.

Some images of acritarchs from the Museum database.

The single grain slides that Tim produced have been photographed and the details and photographs released on the web via our specimen registration system. Tim has been happy with the identifications of most of the Cambrian specimens but would welcome comments on identifications of some of the younger Ordovician and Silurian examples. The Museum database is able to record re-identifications. It is hoped that other experts will log onto this resource and suggest alternative indentifications or back up the published indentifications, further increasing the value of this resource.

The Palaeontology Department on-line specimen database search screen

To find these details, log onto our specimen database system and choose 'acritarchs' in the drop down list for 'fossil group' and click the box for 'images only' (as above). Tim is constantly adding more material to the collections so hopefully in the years to come this will develop into a very useful resource for students of acritarchs and help to ensure that important expertise is not lost.

Postscript. As I was writing this I was sent details of a PhD studentship on acritarchs based at the University of Lille, France.

Irene Kopelman's exhibition entitled "The Challengers Report" opened on 10 Feb at the Gasworks Gallery and features artwork inspired by a visit to the micropalaeontology collections at the Museum. The glass slides of Antarctic radiolarian specimens used by Irene have been loaned for display as part of the exhibition, and two tours of the micropalaeontology collections were provided just after the exhibition opened.

Irene Kopelman in front of two of her acrylic on canvas works based on Radiolaria. Pelham Miller makes a guest appearance in the picture on part of his rapid tour of the gallery!

Irene's work borrows patterns from nature or techniques of observation and classification from the history of science. Her inspirations include the expeditions of renowned explorers such as Scott and Shackleton; the title of the exhibition refers to the Challenger Expedition of 1872-76 which laid the foundations for modern oceanography. The exhibition includes large scale paintings of Antarctic radiolarians (see two of them above).

Gasworks Curator Robert Leckie demonstrating the display of slides loaned by the Museum.

The slides loaned were transported in a purpose built carrying box made by Palaeontology Department Loans Officer Noemi Moran Lorengo from Plastazote inert foam. Noemi also processed the reams of paperwork associated with the loan and carried out a condition survey of the slides prior to their transport.

The purpose built carrying case made from Plastazote and conservation grade card by Noemi (photo provided by Noemi Moran Lorengo).

The slides of Antarctic radiolarians loaned to the exhibition (photo provided by Noemi Moran Lorengo). The specimens themselves are less than half a millimetre in size and are encased in Canada balsam that has turned brown in the roughly hundred years since the slides were created.

Two tours of the micropalaeontology collections were also included in the Gasworks events associated with the exhibition. We were able to showcase some of the amazing artwork associated with our collections including the 1889 Blaschka radiolarian models created from glass. Other materials included specimens and documents on an Antarctic theme including Heron-Allen's bound Terra Nova study volume and some radiolarian slides from the same expedition.

Demonstrating slides and artwork as part of one of the two tours to the Micropalaeontology Collections (photo courtesy of Robert Leckie).

It was great to be able to visit the opening of the exhibition with my family - our daughter Blossom was born shortly before Irene first came to the Museum.

My thanks go to Lil Stevens who pointed Irene in the direction of this material while I was on paternity leave. We are hoping that Irene can come again in March and we can maintain links with artists from Gasworks following the Museum tours.

So how do you get a fossil named after you? The easiest way is to make friends with a Palaeontologist who is good at discovering things and is looking for names to call their new finds. A slightly harder way is to find a new fossil species and give it to a Palaeontologist who names it after you.  (In case you were wondering, it is against the rules to call new discoveries after yourself ). Just before ChristmasI had a visit from my old friend Stuart Sutherland from Canada who named a fossil after me back in 1994. I have four fossils named after me and have named some after others too. Here are the stories behind each of them.

On graduation day in 1993; Professor David Siveter, Andrew Swift, Stuart Sutherland and a young looking Giles Miller.

Stuart and I were studying for our PhDs at the University of Leicester in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We both had similar field areas in the Welsh Borderland around Ludlow and often scheduled fieldwork for the same time, occasionally helping each other to collect study samples. One summer evening I was helping Stuart to collect samples deep in the Mortimer Forest outside Ludlow. Foolishly I managed to hammer my thumb drawing blood and we had to return to our accomodation early.

Angochitina milleri Sutherland, 1994. This chitinozoan is less than half a millimetre in length.

I didn’t realise but Stuart made a note of the sample number and once he dissolved it back in the lab, he found a new species of chitinozoan that he named Angochitina milleri Sutherland, 1994 in my honor. Chitinozoans are tiny organic jug shaped organisms. To this day is it still unclear what they are but they are very useful age diagnostic constituents of marine rocks in the middle Palaeozoic era (very roughly 360-480 Million years ago). Some think that they are some sort of egg case as they sometimes appear linked in chains.

The ostracod Progonocythere milleri Wakefield, 1994 from the Jurassic of Scotland. It is just less than a millimetre long.

While Stuart and I were living in Leicester we shared a house with our good friend Matthew Wakefield who was studying ostracods from the Jurassic of the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. He had discovered several new species that he kindly named after his housemates. New species number 2 is therefore Progonocythere milleri Wakefield, 1994. You will notice that after each milleri is the name of the author and the date of publication. I am honoured to have both of these two species named after me and published in Monographs of the Palaeontological Society, a very prestigious journal that has also published Darwin’s work. The holotype of P. milleri also resides in the collections currently in my care.

The third milleri is more tenuous as the author, Jonathan Adrain (now University of Iowa) discovered lots of new species of trilobite from the Canadian Arctic while he was working at the Museum. He discovered so many that he decided to use the phone list of the Department of Palaeontology at the time to name his various new species. Hence Gerastos milleri Adrain, 1997. In fact there were not enough names on the list to completely cover all his new discoveries so he decided to name some of them after his favourite pop group, The Beatles. His publications therefore include a macartneyi a harrisoni and a petebesti!

Kannathalepis milleri Marss & Gagnier, 2001, scales from an ancient fish from the Canadian Arctic.

At the time I asked Jonathan if he could provide some spare rock from his trilobite studies so that I could attempt to extract microfossils. Some of these samples contained some fish scales that I passed on to my good friend Dr Tiiu Märss of Tallinn Technical University, Estonia with whom I was working at the time. One of these samples contained some fragments of a new fish hence the fourth new species named after me Kanathalepis milleri Märss and Gagnier, 2001.

Pictures taken on fieldwork with Tiiu in 1995; with Peter Tarrant at Man Brook and taking a sample from under a tree half way up Caer Caradoc, Shropshire.

Tiiu also passed me some samples from the Canadian Arctic from which I discovered some new species of ostracod that I named Beyrichia marssae Miller, Siveter and Williams, 2010 and Platybolbina adraini Miller, Siveter and Williams, 2010 in honour of Tiiu and Jonathan. However, you will notice from the date after these names that it took me a much longer time to publish my new species!

Beyrichia marssae and Platybolbina adraini.

As you can see from the stories above, the naming of species new to science sometimes provides historical information about the lives of scientists, their collections and collaborations. Working at the Museum and being involved in science has meant that I have met a lot of people from all around the world, some of whom have decided to honour me by naming new species after me for various reasons.

Sometimes names become superceded when later research shows that they were not really new. Someone may have already described them or they could be a smaller part of something already described. As far as I know all the milleris are still as valid as the friendships gained through working in science. It was lovely to speak to my Estonian colleague Tiiu while working on this post. I see Matt Wakefield regularly at scientific meetings about ostracods. It has also been great to see my old friend Stuart again.

Ocean acidification is one of the major effects of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). Museum collections of samples from the ocean bottom worldwide are housed at our Wandsworth outstation and are vital to working out how much more acidic the oceans have become since the 19th Century and to helping create models for future changes.

Three bottles of ocean sediment collected in 1891 as part of the H.M.S. Penguin cruise to the Mediterranean

Our outstation at Wandsworth holds the Mineralogy Department's Ocean Bottom Sediment Collection. These are sediment samples from many cruises including the first oceanographic voyage the Challenger Expedition of 1872-1876. I mentioned previously that we hold residues including microfossils at South Kensington so why are these bottles of sediment at Wandsworth of interest to micropalaeontologists?

Potentially these bottles contain many thousands of microfossils (the ones above mention the foraminferal genus Globigerina) and as a result, they have been of interest for two PhD students studying the effects of ocean acidification on micro-organisms.

Open University PhD student Kate Salmon accessing the Ocean Bottom Sediment Collection at the Museum outstation at Wandsworth. Curator Dave Smith is in the background.

Kate Salmon is using mainly foraminiferal microfossils to measure the scale of ocean acidification in the area around Bermuda. To do this she is studying samples collected every 2 weeks for the past 20-30 years in sediment traps on the ocean bottom.

The weights and shell thicknesses of these micro-organisms that use the ocean water to produce their shells of calcium carbonate should be different in pre-industrial samples. If ocean acidification is happening we should see lighter more fragile shells in the present day. Kate is using the Ocean Bottom Sediment Collection at the Museum to find comparative material from pre-industrial times.

Kate recently told me, 'If I do the same shell analyses on these samples, it will give a good comparison of low carbon dioxide conditions with higher carbon dioxide conditions (present day) and I will be able to see how conditions have changed for the calcifying biology of the oceans. I can then use these results to predict any future changes in the calcification of foraminifera and the implications this will have for other creatures living in the water column'.

Part of the residue collection from the H.M.S. Penguin expedition collected in 1891.

Ella Howes, a student at the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche sur Mer, France approached us to see if we had any sediment including the remains of tiny organisms called pteropods. These are small planktonic gastropods (floating snails) that have been used extensively in ocean acidification studies. Ella has recent material from near Bear Island in the Mediterranean and wants to compare the composition and structure of these faunas prior to major industrial activity.

She is searching for a particular pteropod species Limacina helicina as well as foraminifera. As with Kate Salmon, she is looking to make measurements of shell thickness to assess possible outcomes of ocean acidification between the Mediterranean and colder water areas.

'In Polar regions the cold temperatures allow increased carbon dioxide in water, potentially causing more extreme repercussions for animals living in these areas. A geographical comparison between the effects on ocean acidification on shell thickness in Polar pteropods and the warmer Mediterranean Sea will be undertaken using modern samples of Limacina helicina and old sediment samples provided by the Natural History Museum' says Ella.

Part of one of four rows of cabinets containing the Ocean Bottom Sediment Collection at the Museum.

When you consider the quantity of material at our Wandsworth outstation, there is limitless potential for similar studies to be carried out. There are literally millions of micro-organsims from the ocean bottom waiting to be studied. Listings of these collections can be found on the Museum web site. In the meantime, I will wait with interest to hear from Kate and Ella if a trip to Wandsworth can help quantify ocean acidification.

Some of the Museum's most important ostracod specimens were re-examined recently using synchrotron technology. The results published in the journal Science showed that these very delicate but exquisitely preserved fossils gave evidence for reproduction using giant sperm back in the Cretaceous period about 100 million years ago.

Research published this year by University of Leeds PhD student Matthew Pound and his co-workers has presented a global vegetation reconstruction for the Late Miocene (11.61-7.25 Million years ago) that suggests a wetter and warmer world at that time. Part of Matthew's research was carried out at the Museum, consulting a vast database of palynological biodiversity compiled over his long career by Palaeontology Department Scientific Associate Dr John Williams.

The above model shows the present day vegetation model (with interpretations for densely populated areas) and a vegetation model for the Late Miocene below (Image courtesy of Matthew Pound).

Pound used John Williams's index to compile a list of published references and species of spores and pollen from worldwide geological sites of Miocene age. Vegetation is very sensitive to climate and therefore the distribution of vegetation can tell us what a climate in the geological record was like.

John Williams consulting his Index of Palaeopalynology (JWIP). (Image courtesy of Dr Susanne Feist-Burkhardt)

Climate models can also predict the distribution of vegetation, so if we have a good data set of fossil vegetation we can evaluate the predictive ability of climate models. This will hopefully show any problems in them, as we will rely on these models to show us the future of global climate change, said Pound.

John Williams with some of the 23,000+ references he consulted to compile his database. (Image courtesy of Dr Susanne Feist-Burkhardt)

John started compiling his index when he was working as a Research Palynologist for BP at Sunbury and continued, first as a Consulting Research Scientist here at the Museum and after he retired, as a Scientific Associate in the Department of Palaeontology. The Index is known as the John Williams Index of Palaeopalynology and is added to on a daily basis by John.

The comprehensive index cross references fossil names, geological age, country and author relating to all palynological groups including spores, pollen and other types of oceanic organic plankton like the dinoflagellate cysts. It is unrivalled as it was compiled by only one person and therefore provides an accurate and consistent interpretation of the literature. It also draws heavily on the scientific information locked away in the unique library collections at the Museum and includes data from some very obscure publications that are not widely available to academic researchers.

Matthew Pound's research is funded by NERC and the British Geological Survey University Funding Initiative, and hosted at the University of Leeds. He hopes to continue to study climate change models as a post-doc and plans to make further use of John's Index of Palaeopalynology. John's index has also been extremely helpful in providing information to manage the Museum palynology collections but is available to any scientific enquirers on request.

A couple of weeks ago we processed a loan to Prof. Dil Joseph and his team at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. They have developed a new method for imaging microfossils under a light microscope called Virtual Reflected Light Microscopy (VRLM). As well as being a novel use for some of our historical residue collections, this potentially provides an interactive method for viewing our collections in 3-D on-line and could greatly aid future users of our collections.

Cindy Wong, Adam Harrison and Dr Dileepan Joseph of the University of Alberta (photo courtesy of Ryan Heise, Communications Officer, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta)

VLRM involves photographing microfossils under many different light conditions and from many different angles so that 3-D images can be built up. The team has also developed software to deliver these images to the web via an interactive interface that allows users to digitally manipulate specimens. A demo of VLRM can be found on-line and 3-D images can be obtained with the help of red-cyan glasses.

In normal circumstances we would make 2 dimensional images of specimens with either a light microscope or with a scanning electron microscope. These would be sent to enquirers about the collections. If possible, scientists would prefer to visit the Museum as they would normally need to manipulate specimens to see features that would not always be visible from 2 dimensional images. VLRM potentially recreates that visitor interaction with the specimens remotely on-line.

Part of the ocean bottom microfossil residue collection housed in the Department of Palaeontology.

The team have borrowed some of our most significant microfossil residues to test their system and develop future applications. These residues come mainly from the H.M.S. Challenger Collection. The Challenger Expedition of 1872-1876 was the first oceanographic voyage. Prior to this, the ocean bottom was completely unexplored so these residues represent a 'first ever glimpse' of the bottom of the worlds oceans.

All of the organisms discovered during this first dredging of the ocean bottoms, including the microfossils, were described resulting in many new species being found. The foraminiferal type specimens of many of these species are housed here in the Museum and are frequently consulted by visitors. When a new species is described, a type specimen must be designated and deposited in a recognised museum so that future workers can consult them if neccessary.

A type slide from the Challenger Foraminifera Collection. It is 7.5cm long.

As the research is being done in North America, it was topical that we also loaned a residue from the Second Albatross Cruise of 1882. The Albatross was reportedly one of the the first vessels built for oceanographic studies and made its maiden voyage from Washington.

Dil Joseph's team in Edmonton have already published on computer aided recognition of foraminifera. It will be very interesting to see how historically significant materials from our collections play a part in future research on this subject. Work on Virtual Reflected Light Microscopy certainly looks to revolutionise how data on microfossil collections will be shared and how we make our collections available in the future.

Special thanks to Lil Stevens who processed this loan. She has now joined the full time curatorial staff and is helping out with micropalaeontology curation.