On the 18th and 19th of November we welcomed over 150 micropalaeontologists who travelled from as far away as New Zealand for a conference at the Museum. Over 50 of them were given tours behind the scenes and 45 micropalaeontology posters were displayed. Thank you to fellow conference hosts and Museum scientists Tom Hill and Steve Stukins who have written this guest blog to describe the significance of these two busy days/weeks/months for micropalaeontology at the Museum:

The stage set for the start of the micropalaeontology conference at the Museum

On Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th November 2013, the Micropalaeontology Unit hosted a conference at the Museum on behalf of The Micropalaeontological Society under the theme Micropalaeontology and the IODP: Past, Present and Future Applications. IODP stands for the International Ocean Drilling Programme and is an international marine research collaboration that explores Earth's history using ocean-going research platforms, for example the JOIDES Resolution research vessel. These platforms drill cores through the seafloor to recover the layers of sediment and rock that have accumulated at the bottom of the oceans.

The conference was a resounding success, with 150 delegates registering and contributing. We even had to close registration a couple of weeks beforehand as we reached capacity. The event included a number of keynote speakers who specialise in research on IOPD samples, numerous presentations and posters covering all aspects of micropalaeontology and tours behind the scenes.

Conference delegates enjoying the poster session

Micropalaeontology is an integral part of IODP studies and as a result micropalaeontologists will be found on all IODP cruises. As the amount of sediment or rock extracted by coring is often relatively small, microfossils provide an ideal route through which scientists can:

• study the age of the sediment under investigation
• reveal the climatic conditions that prevailed at the time of sediment deposition

This is because hundreds, thousands, indeed millions of microfossils may be preserved in a layer of sediment only a few millimetres thick. As a result, micropalaeontology is at the forefront of IODP and climate change research.

Keynote speaker Prof Bridget Wade from University College London

The international relevance and importance of micropalaeontology in ocean research was underlined by the fact that we hosted delegates from across the world including America, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and Tunisia, to name a few. The diversity in delegates was complemented by the similar diversity in micropalaeontology projects that were discussed through both oral and poster presentations.

One of the research topics often discussed was how micropalaeontologists can extract detailed geochemical signals from microfossils to quantify past oceanic and climatic conditions. If such high resolution analysis is applied to an ocean core, it is then possible to reconstruct how oceanic conditions (which in turn reflect climate) have changed over millions of years. Such studies are essential if scientists are to understand how our Earth responds to climate change (whether it be due to natural or human-induced change).

Steve Stukins demonstrating the John Williams Index of Palaeopalynology to a group of M.Sc. students studying Applied and Petroleum Micropalaeontology at the University of Birmingham

The conference also provided a unique opportunity to publicise the quality and quantity of the micropalaeontology collections housed at the Museum to a large specialist audience. Steve and Giles provided tours through the collections to over 50 micropalaeontologists including the new intake of MSc students studying micropalaeontology at Birmingham University.

Numerous new projects to work on our collections and potential new collaborations have resulted from these tours and from discussions we have had during the conference. From the feedback that we received, it seems that members of the Micropalaeontological Society also found the conference a great success. If you are interested to learn more details, the abstract volume for the TMS2013 talks is now available on-line.

The conference would not have been such a great success had it not been for the generosity of our sponsors. We would therefore like to thank The Micropalaeontological Society, The UK-IODP, The Geological Society, AASP – The Palynological Society, Neftex, Olympus, Petrostrat and Beta Analytic for their kind support during this event.

A few weeks ago the Center for the Future of Museums blogged on how to get your museum blog widely read, sadly stating that writing for a niche audience like micropalaeontology is unlikely to be successful. As a reply I thought I would share my own experiences on what has worked for me and what hasn't, with nine tips for museum bloggers.

Choose an eye-catching title and subject

The title and subject ultimately convince the reader whether to visit your post or not. I agree with the Center for the Future of Museums that blogs with titles and subjects that are of general interest will be more widely read, as the post asking Do we need specialist curators? has shown. However, it is also possible to write about your specialist collection and make it relevant to a general audience, such as What microfossils tell us about early humans in Britain or When microfossils meet dinosaurs. Other more specific posts describing collections, databasing or risk management have not been so well read.

Utilise social media to advertise

I quickly realised that there was no point in posting and just hoping that people will automatically find what you have written. Posts tweeted by @NHM_London, which currently has over 400,000 followers, receive significantly more hits than others. We started the @NHM_Micropalaeo Twitter feed to provide micropalaeontology news from the Museum and to advertise posts from this blog. Other relevant advertisement vehicles have been sites such as Facebook, Reddit or LinkedIn, while #AskACurator day on twitter was also a great opportunity to publicise our collections by highlighting previously published blog posts.

Build links with other bloggers and webmasters

Link regularly to associated websites and write to the site owners to let them know that you have done so. I link regularly to the Geological Curators' Group, Forams.eu and The Micropalaeontological Society and they have all provided reciprocal links. Other sites such the Museum website, Focus Magazine and blogger Tony Edger have provided links to my writing, prolonging the reading life for some posts way beyond the point when they are not visible on the blog front page. 

Link to other sites clearly

The visibility of your blog to search engines such as Google is significantly enhanced if you link via a string of text that describes the link. For example, it is best to link to The Micropalaeontological Society rather than writing 'click here'.

Run your own email distribution list

Most sites, like this one, have the option to subscribe and receive updates when new posts go live. This works reasonably well if a lot of people make the effort to create an account and log on to follow your posts. However, most readers I have spoken to do not do this. I have lost count how many times I have heard people say 'I like your blog but I haven't looked at it recently'. I have set up a mailing list based on people I regularly deal with and send a message out every time I post a new blog. Posting blog links to relevant academic listservers has also been successful in generating additional readers.

Write for an audience

I write all posts as if I am explaining to my mother or mother-in-law, but at the same time making the post interesting to experts in the field of micropalaeontology wanting the latest news from the Museum. I feel confident that I am reaching my target audiences as I have been pleased to receive feedback  from a wide range of readers, including:

• university academics
• students
• school teachers
• amateur micropalaeontologists
• members of the public

Think carefully about your reasons for blogging

In my first post I gave the following reason for starting this blog: 

In this age of austerity, I believe that we should be highlighting the good news coming from the Museum so that the applications and relevance of our collections, including those from micropaleontology, are brought to people’s attention.

Even when writing more general posts like this one, I have this theme in my head while writing so it is always possible to include information about our collections and their relevance.

Get your timing right

There is no point in publishing a Microfossil Christmas card blog piece on Christmas Eve and hoping that lots of people will be logging on to read it. Similarly if you are going to tweet about your latest post it is best to do it at at time when most people are likely to read it. My successful post on How to become a curator? was timed to coincide with half term and a gallery exercise called 'curious curators'. Another post went live to coincide with the opening of our Treasures Gallery at the Museum.

Include a good balance of personal narrative

How much you write about yourself and your feelings depends on your writing style and subject of your blog. My blog highlights the collections and their use and not myself, so I sometimes feel that I do not include enough of my own personal story. Posts where I have shown how passionate I am about collections and collecting like my post on 'How to become a curator have been well received though.

Post regularly

If you don't get overnight success then don't give up. It takes time to gain a following, build relationships with other bloggers, webmasters or fellow Tweeters. By definition the more often you post, the more hits you'll get. People are more likely to follow or keep checking a blog that is active.

It has been hard work but as a curator I feel that blogging about my collections has had a major impact on their profile and I would encourage any curator to do the same. In summary, if you write interesting material that gets tweeted and retweeted around the internet then people will read it, whether you are writing about 'niche collections' or not.

This week I celebrate 20 years at the Museum, and my diary has included preparing for a researchers' night highlighting museum science, Tweeting as part of #AskaCurator day and visiting a miniature steam railway.

Monday

Most of today has been spent preparing for Science Uncovered, our EU-funded researchers' night on Friday 27 September. The doors of the Museum will remain open after usual closing time and scientists like myself will be available to talk about our science, show specimens and chat. Presentations in the Nature Live Studio will also be held and it will be possible to book tours to areas of the Museum not normally open to the public.

This core from the Atlantic SW of Ireland represents the last major glacial period showing glacial dropstones from colder periods (left) and white sections composed almost entirely of warm water microfossils (right). The green packets and plastic sleeve maintain an oxygen free environment.

We are showing some deep sea cores taken from the Atlantic Shelf off SW Ireland through sediment that was deposited during the last glaciation. It's a great opportunity to show the key role micropalaeontology plays in quantifying and dating past climatic episodes. The core relates to periods when icebergs broke off glaciers and traversed the North Atlantic.

Tuesday

A major part of my job is dealing with enquiries about our microfossil collections and subsequently hosting visits or preparing loans. Two main collections are our most requested, the Challenger Foraminifera and the Blaschka glass models of radiolarians. Since three specimens from our Blaschka collections have been on display in our Treasures Gallery, we have had an increased number of enquiries and visitors to view the other 180 specimens that are not currently on display.

Image of one of our Blaschka glass radiolarian models that was widely retweeted during #AskACurator day.

Today we are showing the undisplayed Blaschka collection to an artist, last week it was a glassworker from Imperial College and later this week it is a photographer hoping to create a book of images from Blaschka collections across Europe.

Wednesday

I have spent virtually the whole day on Twitter monitoring questions and providing answers as part of #AskACurator day. Fellow curators from over 500 different museums and 35 different countries have been fielding questions over Twitter causing the hashtag to trend. At one stage it was globally the second most discussed subject on Twitter.

I answered questions like:

'Do you require a masters degree to become a curator?'

'Which museum, other than your own, inspired you recently?' (the Foraminiferal Sculpture Park in China)

'Which specimens in your collection give you goosebumps when you see them?' (Blaschka glass models) 

'What sparked your interest to become a curator?'

'Do you need to be an obsessive to be a curator?'

'Which specimen not currently on display would you like to see being displayed?' (100 year old microfossil Christmas card).

Many of the questions I was able to expand on using links to blog posts, particularly the one entitled 'How to become a curator'. I started to reply to the 'what is a curator?' question but could not cram 'someone who cares for a collection by enhancing its documentation and storage, maintains access to it by facilitating loans, visits and exhibits and promotes its relevance by engaging with potential users' into 140 characters.The day certainly showed what a varied job we all have, how passionate we are and that one day is never the same as another.

Thursday

My colleague Steve has worked out that we had 65 new interactions (messages, favourites, retweets, new followers) during #AskACurator day yesterday as well as some more hits to this blog. However, I am saddened as I read a well known museums blog that says that the best way to reach a wide audience is to avoid niche subjects like micropalaeontology and links direct to my blog as an example. It starts me wondering if accumulating vast numbers of hits really show that a blog is successful?

A string of meetings are scheduled too; we are applying for funding for a major 3 year conservation project, the photographer arrives to discuss his project and we are finishing an application to hire a new PhD project studying traits of evolution. Microfossils are extremely useful as their fossil record is relatively complete compared to other fossil groups and collections can be made relatively easily across large geographical areas.

Friday

Earlier in the week I got to work to find two of my train mad, three year old son Pelham's Thomas the Tank Engine stickers on my socks. On Monday he is starting nursery school so today we are taking him and his younger sister Blossom to one of our favourite places, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in Kent. I feel that this family day is a suitable way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my arrival at the Museum as a volunteer.

The Museum has been running an inspiring schools activity under the "How Science Works" strand of the National Curriculum, in which children carry out their own microfossil research project. In just over an hour, they investigate the microfossils in some Gault Clay collected from Folkestone, and learn the processes behind research including how scientists collect data, use it to solve problems and publish their findings.

Feedback from the school groups shows that it is a fun and engaging way to learn about science away from the normal classroom environment. After completing the exercise, many children indicated that they were more enthusiastic towards a career in science and some even felt that they were already scientists!

Sally Collins and Jamie Robinson about to start a "How Science Works" session with a school group at the Museum.

The activity was developed by Sally Collins, currently part of the Museum Content Development Team, and Dr Craig Koch, while he was studying for his PhD in the Palaeontology Department. It can now be run entirely by Museum educators, while the use of commonly available kit such as washing up bowls and plastic screw topped bottles means that there is potential for holding this schools exercise in locations away from the Museum.

The 'How Science Works' activity

Before the exercise, Gault Clay from Folkestone is crushed into 1-2cm lumps while still wet, and subsequently left to dry. At the start of the class, approximately 100g is then placed in a plastic screw-topped container and boiling water added. After the container has cooled down a bit and some cold water added to bring it down to a safe temperature, it is shaken rather like a cocktail shaker.

While the sediment is soaking, there is time for the class leader to explain the exercise and how micropalaeontology is used in earth science research. A video is shown, featuring Craig and his supervisor Dr Jeremy Young on a research cruise and working in the laboratories at the Museum.

Sieving sediment in the classroom.

After soaking for 15 minutes, the sediment is sieved, dried in a microwave and rehydrated before a final sieving and drying. The microwave heating and subsequent drying ensures that the process can be carried out in a short period of time.

The small microfossil residues produced are then examined under a microscope by the children and a chart is provided to help them identify the microfossils present. By analysing the geological ranges of all the species present, it is quickly possible for the children to determine the age of the clay.

This is similar to the work that a micropalaeontologist might carry out on a well site, where age information could be used by the drillers to decide to continue drilling or stop. Drilling a well too deep can be a costly mistake so sometimes the micropalaeontologist on a well site is put in a major decision-making position!

The chart used by the students to identify their microfossils and  decide on the age of the clay.

There is still time for a final class discussion of the results obtained by each group and how scientists communicate their findings by publishing their data. The session I attended recently ended with a very entertaining discussion amongst the children about how the 'peer review process' effectively makes sure that scientists' results are checked before they are published.

Teacher and student feedback

Some of the school class teachers have provided feedback, including:

'Perfectly engaging, challenging and inspiring

'The students were pretty curious and asked a lot of questions which in my opinion shows that the workshop had a stimulating effect on them.'

Children taking the exercise have also had the chance to feedback. Here is a selection of answers given when participants were asked if taking the class had affected their plans for taking science:

'I was thinking about studying science for A-level beforehand -  my visit today has reinforced that'

'Yes makes me want to study science more'

Yes, I’d love to do something related to micropalaeontology'

Yes because now I am thinking of becoming a scientist'

Yes, I will go home and purchase a microscope!'

'I will take my science lessons more seriously'

'No it has improved my desire to study science more. I am inspired.'

The foraminifera Epistomena spinulifera; one of the age indicative species of microfossils in the clay.

When the children were asked to say what they 'didn’t know or never realised' some answers were:

I never realised that ...

‘you could have so much fun with clay’

'there were microfossils in clay'

'I do actually like biology'

'that rocks could be dated!'

'science facts had to go through a long process before getting published'

Finally some general comments that I think sum up the impact of the exercise nicely:

'We got to do our own experiment and discover things and come to a conclusion which made us feel like scientists'

[I enjoyed it very much] 'because it was really fun and I learnt more than I probably would in a normal science lesson'

'I enjoyed looking at the fossils from millions of years back and it makes me feel special to realise that I am the first one to see them'

[I enjoyed it very much] 'because we could be scientists and actually find the results on our own. Rather than a classroom where you are told what happens and told the results.'

This positive feedback from previous "How Science Works" schools vists shows that it is a very successful format for learning. Unfortunately it is not currently being run by the Museum due to lack of bookings and staff resource issues. Sally Collins reports that 'we could only run it for half a class at a time due to the space limitations of the Earth Science Teaching Room and the need for everyone to be able to access sinks and electricity. The trend in the past couple of years has been for secondary schools to bring larger and larger groups.'

The exercise has been modified to use washing up bowls instead of sinks and the use of microscopes in other spaces in the Museum such as the Earth Lab mean that larger groups could be accomodated in the future.

The Gault Clay exercise is currently being run successfully at Peterborough Museum. My colleague Dr Steve Stukins has been working with Peterborough and the Natural History Museum's Real World Science Officer Hannah Pritchard to develop a similar hands-on activity using local Oxford Clay. I look forward to hearing about the Oxford Clay exercise and hope to see the successful Gault Clay schools activity running again at the Museum soon.

According to January 2013 figures on their websites, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has more than 32 million specimens, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington over 126 million  and the Natural History Museum over 70 million. Do we really know how many specimens we have here at the Museum? Are these figures meaningful and does it matter if we haven't estimated correctly?

When I consider the collections in my care I often have a chuckle about these figures and wonder if I could ever even get close to estimating the actual number of specimens in my collection. Take the jars and bottles below for example; there are literally hundreds of thousands of microfossils in there.

In this post I take you through a recent calculation to estimate the number of items we have in our micropalaeontology collection, and conclude that understanding how these collection sizes have been estimated is essential in deciding how to manage them.

Bottles of microfossil residues containing literally uncountable numbers of specimens.

It is relatively easy to make a quick and accurate size calculation for some parts of the microfossil collection. Slides are housed in standard cabinets holding 105 drawers that each hold 55 slides. The 24 standard cabinets in the Heron-Allen Microfossil Library therefore contain roughly 138,600 slides if they are full. By similar calculations, the Former Aberystwyth University Microfossil Collection contains a total of about 60,000 slides and the Former BP Microfossil Collection 300,000.

However, some cabinets are not completely full so we estimated percentage of expansion space and scaled down the figures accordingly. The total number of microfossil slides in the entire collection is estimated to be about 550,000.

But this is an estimate for the number of slides, not specimens. One slide, like the residue bottle, may contain 10s, 100s or even 1000s of specimens. Is it worth counting all of these? Probably not. You'd be there forever. Obviously when calculating the 70 million specimen figure, these vast numbers of additional specimens have not been taken into consideration otherwise the microfossil collection would have accounted for a large percentage of the total 70 million figure and perhaps even surpassed it!

This slide was counted as a single item in our size estimate for the microfossil collection. Each square contains a different species and multiple specimens are present, so these counts could legitimately be added to our total number of specimens for the collection.

It would appear that by counting slides and not the specimens on them, we are making the microfossil collection and hence the Museum collection appear smaller than it is. So does this matter?

This really depends on how you use the information. I think it is fine to give estimated figures like we do on the Museum website as it gives members of the public an idea of the vast size of the collection. On the other hand, if you use these figures to make decisions on how to allocate resources to the collection, then it becomes really important to account for the way in which the data is generated.

It wouldn't be right for example, to decide how much funding to give a museum relative to another one based on figures like these, without knowing how they had been generated. It's probably unwise to take too much notice of website details of the relative sizes of collections at the AMNH, Smithsonian and Natural History Museum, as the data has almost certainly been gathered in a different way by each institution.

Another slide with multiple specimens that counts for a single item within the 550,000 slides in the microfossil collection. The story behind this slide can be found in my Microfossil Christmas Card post.

If we have 70 million specimens in the Museum, and just over half a million in the microfossil collection, which is looked after by one curator, it would, on average, suggest that we need 140 curators to manage the entire collection. The actual figure is closer to 100. Taking these figures literally would therefore suggest that I am doing well to only have to manage half a million specimens!

Of course it is not that simple. Data derived from other parts of the Museum collection are not comparable. A tray of 100 identical sharks teeth for example would have been counted as 100 individual specimens, whereas the squared microfossil slide shown above would have counted as an individual item. Other parts of the collection might appear to require more management resources, until they are compared on an equal basis by separating out curatorial units sometimes referred to as 'collection lots'. The tray of 100 sharks teeth in this instance would count as one collection lot.

It would be wrong to suggest that collection size estimates are the only factors taken into consideration when deciding how to allocate resources across a vast collection like ours. Monetary value, state of conservation, suitability for display, visitor and loan demand, educational, scientific and historical significance are also taken into account. 

I would say that 70 million is probably an under-estimate of the size of the Museum collection if you take into consideration the 'microfossil factor' of collections where there are simply uncountable numbers of specimens within collection lots. I don't think we will ever come to a meaningful total if we attempt to count individual specimens.

However, it is vital that we are consistent in how we interpret the figures derived from our own collection, especially if we use them to help make decisions on how to manage it in the future. An estimation of the number of lots rather than specimens would help towards this.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted regularly to my blog over the last couple of months and that's because I've been in Malaysia visiting my Masters student Atilia Bashardin at the Universiti Teknologie, PETRONAS, where I have just been appointed a visiting lecturer. This and the next two posts will be an annotated series of pictures covering my visit to Malaysia, fieldwork, the university and even a few pictures showing what a lucky geologist eats while they are in the field!

Peninsular Malaysia does not, at first sight, look very promising for geologists as it is mainly flat, covered with palm oil plantations and paddy fields like this one above. Every now and again, amazing, imposing limestone hills rise from the flat landscape, while granites form a mountain backbone to the peninsular. As the granites formed beneath the surface of the earth, the heat given off metamorphosed the limestones, often turning them to marble. This gave them the hardness and resistance to erosion that causes them to stand out as we see them today.

Because the limestone hills are geographically isolated from each other and heated to varying temperatures depending on proximity to the granites, it is difficult to work out if they relate to the same rock formations based soley on descriptions of the rocks exposed.

Knowing the relative ages of the hills and the distribution of rock formations present is vital for reconstructing the geological history of the area. The area surrounding the Malaysian peninsular has a complex geological history and now consists of roughly north-south trending major crustal units or terraines that docked together at various stages through geological time.

Studying conodonts from these limestones can help to date the rock formations, give an idea of the environments in which they were deposited and even suggest the maximum temperature to which they have been heated.

It's important to be well fed while you are carrying out fieldwork. This curry lunch banquet above was served on a granite table lined with a bed of banana leaves. The food in this region is a delightful mix of Thai, Malay, Indian and Chinese, often combining these various tastes.

PhD student Haylay Tsegab (right) is pictured above with his supervisor Dr Aaron Hunter (left), who was my host for the duration of the trip. Aaron has volunteered at the Museum and previously held a short term curatorial position in our Palaeontology Department (now part of Earth Sciences at the Museum). He is also co-supervisor of our Masters student Atilia Bashardin. Haylay is studying the carbonate sedimentology of some of the limestone hills in the Kinta Valley where the city of Ipoh is situated.

During our first day in the field we visited one of Haylay's study sites at Sungai Siput. Here they are going to drill a borehole through a section of relatively unmetamorphosed limestone. The digger behind them was used to clear the path to an old quarry so that the drilling equipment could be transported to the site.

In the picture above, the hammer marks the approximate site where the borehole was due to be drilled a few days later. I took a sample for conodonts just to the left of the hammer in an attempt to date this succession of rocks that are believed to be Silurian age (approximately 415-440 million years old). I carried the 2kg sample home in my suitcase and it is now dissolving slowly in acetic acid (vinegar) in a lab down in the depths of the Palaeontology Building.

As well as dating the rock, it is hoped that the conodonts will be able to tell us the maximum temperature to which the rock has been heated: as conodonts are heated, they change from a pristine amber to black, grey and eventually white and these colour changes can be calibrated to show a maximum palaeo-temperature reading for the rock formation they came from. This is important as oil, gas and other minerals form under various temperature conditions.

The limestone above has a large number of calcite veins running through it. The quarry was originally set up to provide ornamental stones like this one. Usually for a field picture like this, I would include a lens cap, coin or finger for scale. However, I didn't want to spoil this image so you will have to believe me that the field of view is approximately 20cm across.

The sample selected during field work contained as few calcite veins as possible because conodonts from these types of samples are likely to be fragmented due to the stresses and strains that the rocks have been subjected to. This section is important as it is relatively unmetamorphosed and early indications suggest that the limestone is black because of its high organic content. This, as well as its accessibility, is why this site has been chosen for drilling as part of Haylay's studies.

One of the questions remaining to be answered is whether these organic-rich-rocks are a potential source for hydrocarbons? The colour of any conodonts found should be able to tell us the answer to this. Malaysia's oil has been obtained from much younger rocks offshore to the east of peninsular Malaysia and North Borneo, not from the region we are studying. 

The 'path' shown above is a typical limestone exposure reached after a drive north to Kg Ujung Bukit, Perlis. Here we took a sample for Atilia's M.Sc. project to study conodonts from Silurian rocks of the mainland and Langkawi Island. The rocks here have been given the same formation name as those exposed on Langkawi Island to the west. The fact that two different names have traditionally been given to this formation, the Setul Limestone Formation and the Mampelan Limestone Formation, shows some of the issues with interpreting the geology of the region.

This is Aaron and Atilia after we had taken a sample of limestone that filled half of Atilia's rucksack. Usually conodont workers would take samples of at least a kilogramme in size and some have been known to take 50kg samples! Here we took about 5kg but didn't hang around for long after this picture was taken as we heard a snake in the undergrowth. We had probably disturbed it with our hammering!

We followed up various reports of small quarries and rock exposures which led us to a small, shallow, disused quarry at the back of a house. The owners and their children were very interested to see why Atilia appeared to be trying to put piece of rock from their back garden into a plastic bag! While I was writing this blog post, I heard from Atilia that this sample has yielded some conodonts. Sometimes it can take weeks or months for samples to dissolve in weak acids, in this case, acetic acid. The tiny conodont elements then have to be picked out individually from under a microscope with a fine paint brush in the lab.

Here we presumed that Atilia was trying to find out from the house owner if there are any more exposures of the limestone in the local area. Shortly after this, he led us to a quarry on his motorbike but sadly there was no limestone there. It may have already been quarried out. We did see some of the same rock lining a drainage ditch by the side of this road but resisted all temptation to sample it! It wouldn't have helped us as it was not part of an in-situ rock exposure so could have come from anywhere.

Atilia demonstrating how to remain well covered up during mid-day fieldwork while carrying another limestone sample.

It's important to remain hydrated while doing fieldwork in the humid conditions of South-East Asia. On most days there would be a large thunderstorm that cleared the air and, fortunately, we were never in the field during one of these. Most of these drinks shown above are iced water but usually we combined it with some lovely fruit juices and an occasional iced coffee. 

I have attempted to set the scene for some of the geological problems that we are hoping to solve using conodonts. My next post will detail our trip to Langkawi Island in search of yet more conodonts and hopefully more answers to our questions.

The end of March and start of April at the Museum marks the end of our reporting year so I thought I'd report on the news from the micropalaeontology collections over the past year. This includes details of national press coverage, exhibitions, loans, acquisitions, disposals, visitors, university teaching, projects by artists and answers to big questions about past climates.

Our most iconic specimen as advertising for the Treasures Gallery as 'hair to a Neanderthal with Darwin's beard'!

Exhibitions

Microfossils are not the easiest display subjects. However, this year has seen several microfossil themed displays, both in the Museum and galleries elsewhere, that feature or have been inspired by our collections.

The highlight of the year has to be the display of one of our Blaschka glass models of radiolarians in the new Treasures Exhibition in the main hall of the Museum. The radiolarian scale model, multiplied by about 500 times, was a centrepiece of the display and featured heavily in the advertising for the gallery. The gallery has a public voting panel at the end and last time I looked, the Blaschka items were second favourite behind Guy the Gorilla!

The radiolarian model received a large amount of press coverage as part of the advertising of the gallery, including an image in the colour supplement of the Financial Times. I am told that a giant image of the model was projected onto the wall behind the Duchess of Cambridge as she opened the exhibition. A Blaschka video also featured on the Museum's YouTube channel including some additional radiolarian models that are yet to be put on display.

The year started with the the exhibition at the Gasworks Gallery of Irene Kopelman's images inspired by our collection of Antarctic Ocean radiolarians and ended with Gemma Anderson's exhibition of art at the Ebb and Flow Gallery, inspired partly by the loan of some radiolarian specimens from our collections.

Images of coccolithophores from our archives have been on display at the British Museum. Closer to home, Tom, Steve and I used a portable scanning electron microscope to display our microfossil zoo during the Science Uncovered public event in the galleries at the Museum in September.

Microfossil Christmas cards featured in the national media.

Other national press coverage

Our collections of Foraminifera hit the national press at Christmas when the story behind the microfossil Christmas cards was published by the Independent and a gallery of images from the collection were included on the BBC Focus web site.

The cabinet of foraminiferal slides loaned to the University of Birmingham for teaching on the Applied and Petroleum Micropalaeontology course.

Loans to support micropalaeontology teaching

The main loan of the year was to the University of Birmingham who borrowed 730 slides and over 2,500 countable specimens for use in the teaching of the new MSc course in Applied and Petroleum Micropalaeontology. Another loan of 180 slides from the former British Petroleum Collection was sent to support a student project on the same course that will be co-supervised by my colleague Steve Stukins.

Other loans have supported undergraduate projects at the University of Manchester and a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. A total of 500 images of our specimens or surrogate loans have also been sent out this year.

Tom Hill transporting part of the Modern Pollen and Spores collection past the giant sequoia in the main hall.

Collection enhancements and disposals

In January we transferred over 30,000 slides of modern pollen and spores from the former Botany Department. A good start has been made with rehousing some of the slides that are currently stored in less than adequate conditions. Other major donations have included 5 slide cabinets of Recent Foraminifera donated by Prof Jo Haynes to accompany the former Aberystwyth University Micropalaeontology Collection that arrived in 2000.

Space for these new collections was created by donating a large number of duplicate foraminiferal reprints to the Gryzbowski Library in Poland and a large collection of duplicate ostracod reprints to the University of Brasilia in Brazil.

Some acritarch images taken by Associate Tim Potter that were released on-line database this year.

Details of our collections on-line

About 8,900 microfossil specimen records were added to the museum on-line database this year and completed the transfer of records from our paper fossil foraminiferal registers. Details of about 90,000 microfossil slides are now available on-line covering most of our type and figured collection of fossil foraminifera.

Records from the Richard Dingle Collection of 90,000 ostracods on 2,500 slides were also added to the database this year and a paper detailing the collection published in the Journal of Micropalaeontology. The collection underpins Richard's work on ostracods that has helped illuminate some major questions in evolution, detailed the movements of ancient continents and shown patterns of migration of ostracods across oceans.

1,776 microfossil images from our collection have been posted on-line this year. Images of acritarchs from Tim Potter's collection have been added (see above). Images and videos relating to the Duxbury collection of Cretaceous Dinoflagellates are now available with the specimen details on-line.

A cabinet of former staff member Dr Ray Bate's correspondence relating to the ostracod collection has been transferred to the Museum archive and details of these documents added to the on-line archive search.

Temperature ranges of non marine ostracod species identified by Horton et al. (1992) from a Hoxnian site about 400,000 years old at Woodston, Peterborough. The mutual temperature range for the month of January is calculated and shows slightly lower mean temperatures than the present day (courtesy of Dr David Horne). New records of non-marine ostracod occurrences from our collections have been added to Dr Horne's database this year.

Visitors

We hosted in excess of 200 scientific visitors again this year and welcomed student groups from the University of Birmingham, Imperial College, King's College and the British Science Academy. Academic visitors from universities continue to make up the majority of our visitor numbers with a visit from a post doctoral student from Turkey a highlight. She used the distribution of ostracod species in our collections to add to a database which helps estimate past climatic conditions.

John Williams with part of the Index of Palaeopalynology.

Publications on our collections

This is a harder question to answer as we usually rely heavily on our collection users to provide details of their publications that cite or figure our collections. I know of at least three major mongraphs in preparation/press and this year a book proposal submitted by Micropalaeontology staff and associates on the Museum Iraq Petroleum Microfossil Collection was accepted by Wiley Blackwell.

A short article on the John Williams Index of Palaeopalynology was also published in the journal Palynology and we continue to welcome palynologists to use the index for their research.

Thanks

I hope this does not sound like I am soley responsible for carrying out all of these tasks relating to visits, loans, donations, collections moves and exhibitions. It has very much been a team effort with so many collaborators that is would be impossible to list them all here. I would particularly like to thank Museum Scientists Tom Hill, Steve Stukins and our volunteers Daryl, Johanna, Freya, Heather and Stephanie without whose support this extremely successful year for the collections would not have been possible.

And finally ...

Keep in touch with what we're doing in Micropalaeontology with our @NHM_Micropalaeo Twitter feed that we also launched this year, which is where you'll hear about new positions in the labs and about our recent activities like this podcast from Palaeocast in which I featured.

It feels strange recommending readers to go to another museum. However, this is a great example of the application of Micropalaeontology to archaeological studies and the use of our nannofossil collection. My colleague Tom Hill has just returned from a meeting on 'Geological applications in Archaeology' so this subject is receiving a lot of interest at the moment.

Just before Christmas I had an enquiry from the British Museum asking me to provide a high definition image of a nannofossil for their multimedia gallery guides. The image was taken by my former colleague Jeremy Young as part of research on the Folkton Drums published in the journal Antiquity in 2004 with British Museum staff Andrew Middleton and Janet Ambers.

The Folkton Drums

These carved stone cylinders known as the Folkton Drums were found associated with a child's burial site at Folkton near Filey northeast Yorkshire. The diameter of the largest is 146mm and they are made of incised stone with a grooved ware pottery design indicating a probable Later Neolithic age of about 2,500-2,000 BC.

The Folkton Drums. Image copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum, ref AN155870001, registration number 1893,1228.15.

Nannofossils and the museum collection

Jeremy Young was asked to analyse a very small amount of material removed from a blemish on the bottom of the smallest item. At the time it was not known if the stone was chalk or magnesian limestone. Chalk contains the remains of tiny calcareous coccolith plates formed by a unicellular plant called a coccolithophore. These are present in the oceans of today and are widely used for studies on recent changes to our oceans and environment.

The Museum houses a large collection of fossil and recent coccolith preparations, and images made by Jeremy Young. Because most coccoliths are less than a thousandth of a millimetre in size, it is very difficult to isolate them as individual specimens or to find the same specimen again even using a scanning electron microscope. As a result, images are just as important as the preparations from which the images were made and species are often defined by images alone. We have a collection of tens of thousands of such images.

A  false coloured scanning electron microscope image of the fragment of Folkton Drum analysed by Jeremy Young.
The scale bar is 10 microns which is 0.01 mm.

What the nannofossils told us?

The fragment contained a typical late Cretaceous coccolith assemblage dominated by Watznaueria barnesae, Biscutum constans and Prediscosphaera cretacea. The species Micula staurophora suggests a Coniacean-Masstrichtian age of the Cretaceous (c. 65-85 Mya). The coccolith evidence suggests that the drums were made from deposits of the Upper Chalk rather than Magnesian Limestone.

Chalk is available locally and Magnesian Limestone from deposits about 45kms away. However, the results cannot show for certain that the chalk used was derived locally as the outcrop of the Upper Chalk Formation covers a large area of England. A non-destructive method called Raman Spectroscopy used by Janet Ambers at the British Museum also confirmed a chalk rather than Magnesian Limestone composition.

Where to see them?

The Folkton Drums can been seen in Gallery 51 at the British Museum. The nannofossil image is shown as part of the British Museum multimedia guide available in 11 different languages on request. If you are interested in the subject of 'Geological applications in Archaeology' then further details can be found via the University of Leicester web site.