I'm very excited to see that the Museum is running a half term activity called Curious Collectors. As a child I would have loved this as I was an avid collector and had my own rock collection under my bed. Some of my Geology undergraduate colleagues may even remember me at the end of a field trip to Cyprus sitting next to an enormous pile of rocks I had collected and telling me 'you can't possibly take ALL those home on the plane...'

My passion for collecting and collections led me to a career as a curator at the Natural History Museum. What path led me to that dream job and more importantly, what do you need to do to become a curator?

My first field sketch aged 7 and my holiday diary recounting a visit to the Lizard, Cornwall to collect some serpentinite. (Yes serpentinite has purples, reds and greens!). I still have the specimen I collected that day with the help of family friend Chris Moat, frequent donor to 'Museum Giles'.

First off though, what is a curator? This question is probably worthy of a separate blog post and frequently leads to differences in opinion. 'Curator' can mean different things in different types of museums and in different parts of the world. In North America a museum curator is hired to do research and there my job would probably be labelled 'Collections Manager'.

I like the idea that in Australia a curator prepares the pitch for test match cricket but I'm inclined to agree with University College curator Nicholas J Booth who prefers to restrict the use of the term to museums. For the purposes of this blog post I shall say that a curator 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. With that, here's how to become one:

• Take advice on what to study at University

To work as a curator at the Museum you need to have a relevant science degree. My degree choice of Geology was entirely driven by my desire to find out about the specimens in my personal collection. I remember coming to the Museum in the early 1980s to ask my family friend, the late John Thackray, what A-levels I required to study Geology at University and being dismayed at his answer of 'Maths, Physics and Chemistry'. You will notice that I did not study Biology. At the time I did not know that I would be so inspired to take further studies on microfossils and become a Palaeontologist.

• Take a further degree?

There is no right or wrong answer here. When I first came to the Museum I was are rare example of a curator in my department with a PhD. A further degree in a relevant subject certainly helps but is not absolutely neccessary. In some ways, curatorial jobs at the Museum are unusually specialised as our main interactions are with research scientists. For positions in other museums it can be more advantageous to have a broader background because you would usually be expected to responsible a much wider range of collections and focus on different tasks. A masters in Museum Studies is often a requirement in these situations. Having said that, the majority of my curatorial colleagues do not have this qualification.

• Get some work experience

Specialising made my career prospects narrower and my PhD was followed by a lengthy period of job seeking. I was not getting interviews because I had qualifications but no experience. I decided that a spot of volunteering was what was required to boost my CV and get me on the career ladder so I moved from Leicester to London to volunteer at the Museum. It's never too early to start thinking about getting some experience and school work experience students often come to the Museum. Volunteer and work experience opportunities are advertised regularly on the museum web site.

• Be in the right place at the right time

I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time as I volunteered just as a new microfossil collection had been donated that was relevant to my PhD. Shortly afterwards a temporary position became available as Curator of the former BP Microfossil Collection. I held this temporary position for 6 years until I was successful with an application to get a position on the permanent staff. It's the same in almost any profession. Being in the right place at the right time can make a big difference and sometimes you have to be patient before the right opportunity comes up.

• Find out more

If you'd like information about curators and their activities then consider joining the Geological Curators' Group or the Natural Sciences Collections Assocation (NatSCA).  There are many curators like myself blogging and you can also find out more about their daily activities through Facebook or Twitter (follow us on @NHM_Micropalaeo). The Museum web site includes a fossil hunting guide if you feel inspired to go out and do some collecting yourself.

• Start now!

Don't leave it too late to get involved like I did. If you can get to London between 18th-22nd Feb then why not sign up to be a Curious Collector?  If you can't get to London then why not contact your local museum and get involved in similar activities? It's a great way to start gathering that experience needed to help you become a curator.##

Last year I posted some images of microfossils sent as Christmas cards by Arthur Earland (1866-1958) to his collaborator Edward Heron-Allen (1861-1943). Following my post I was contacted by Brian Davidson who now owns Arthur Earland's collection. He visited the Museum in October and brought with him some fine examples of Arthur Earland's foraminiferal slides. It is 100 years since the creation of one of the Museum slides and the story of Earland and Heron-Allen, their collaboration and their subsequent falling out has been published in The Independent newspaper and subsequently the BBC Focus web site.

The slide of Foraminifera made by Arthur Earland for Edward Heron-Allen in 1912.

How were they made?

Each individual specimen was positioned with a fine paint brush and glued down with gum Tragacanth by Arthur Earland. The specimens are Foraminifera; single celled organisms that mainly form shells of calcium carbonate with one or many openings. The sandy looking lettering on the slide is made mainly from tube shaped agglutinating Foraminifera of the genus Rhabdammina that gathers fine sediment from the sea floor to create a shelter for the single celled organism.

Why were they made?

Arthur Earland made them as gifts for his collaborators and aquaintances. He collaborated with Edward Heron-Allen for over 25 years, including a publication on the Foraminifera of the 1910-1913 Antarctic expedition of the Terra Nova (also known as Scott's Last Expedition). The specimens were chosen to show the amazing range of morphologies of the Foraminifera. Other slides in the collection show assemblages from particular samples, for example dredgings from the Challenger Expedition.

Portraits of Heron-Allen and Earland now hanging in the Museum's micropalaeontology library, The Heron-Allen Library.

Arthur Earland

Earland was a high-ranking civil servant who made a career working for the Post Office Savings Bank. Earland and Heron-Allen shared a room at the British Museum (Natural History) where they were able to work on the Foraminifera in an unpaid capacity. Earland's private collection is now owned by Brian Davidson who bought it from Brigadier H. G. Smith who had obtained it from the Estate of F. W. Mills in 1952. Earland must therefore have disposed of his collection well before his death in 1958. Foraminiferal slides made by Earland have been recorded in Ireland and also in Scotland where he went to live after his falling out with Heron-Allen. Brian Davidson has a listing for a 1,500 specimen slide made by Earland that has not been located in any museum collection.

Edward Heron-Allen

Heron-Allen, a Lawyer by profession, also had an unpaid position at the British Museum (Natural History). He was responsible for gathering much of the early microfossil collection as well as a vast library of foraminiferal books which he donated to the Museum in 1926. They are now housed, along with more recent microfossil library acquisitions, in the 'Heron-Allen Library'. The web site of the Heron-Allen Society lists his interests: violin making, palmistry, Persian texts, Selsey, esoteric fiction and asparagus. A number of publications detailing Heron-Allen's interests are available via the society.

The "Christmas card" slide made in 1930 and a 1922 "Thank you" slide made by Arthur Earland for Edward Heron-Allen. The 1930 slide contains far fewer specimens than some made in the 1920s that fill the whole cavity. This may represent a waning of their relationship by this time.

Why did they fall out?

In the early 1930s their long collaboration ended suddenly. Anecdotal evidence suggests they visited the Museum to work on different days after this to avoid seeing each other. Historical data and two key pieces of evidence in the Museum archives suggest a number of factors in the deterioration of their personal and professional relationship:

• Poor health
  
  At the time both Heron-Allen and Earland were in poor health. Heron-Allen was devastated by the tragic death of his youngest daughter Armorel in a car accident in 1930 while Earland had angina and was unhappy at being passed over for the position of controller of the Post Office Savings Bank.

• Authorship on a publication
  
  Part 2 of the monograph on the Discovery Foraminifera published by Earland in 1933 tells an interesting story. Part 1 had been published jointly by Heron-Allen and Earland but a note in part 2 states "Owing to illness, my colleague Edward Heron-Allen was unable to take as large a share as usual in the preparation of this report. At his own request, and against my wish, his name is omitted from the authorship".
  
  Heron-Allen's personal copy of the monograph tells a different story. A handwritten note, that subsequently had several layers of paper stuck over it, reads; "I had my name removed from the titles of this paper, when, on my return from Ceylon in 1931 I found that Earland had claimed all my work upon it as his own, and that, not having knowledge of the German language, he had ignored Hans Wiesner's report on the 'Süd-Polar Expedition' in which (in my opinion) most of his new genera and species are described and figured."

• Division of labour
  
  The Museum archives contain a letter written in Edinburgh in 1943 from Earland to Ovey, who was then curator of Foraminifera at the Museum. It itemises in great detail exactly who did what during their association. It would appear that Earland did most of the slide related work while Heron-Allen did the writing, often using his personal wealth to encourage editors to accept their manuscripts for publication (In the Heron-Allen Library we have the receipts for various bills paid relating to illustrations and publishing).
  
  What is certain is that Earland's collection does not contain any "Christmas Card Slides" from Heron-Allen. Either they were never made or they were destroyed by Earland. The collection's owner Brian Davidson tells me that any references to Heron-Allen on the slides have also been scored out.

• Jealousy and recognition
  
  It is clear from the 1943 letter that Earland was jealous of Heron-Allen who had all the connections and the money to pay for publications while Earland felt that he was the one doing the work. He may have had a point as all their papers were by Heron-Allen and Earland with Earland's name never as first author. Heron-Allen had also been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his work on the Foraminfera. 

• A female acquaintance
  
  The 1943 letter states that everything was fine until "that final woman" came around. Heron-Allen was a very charismatic and popular figure and often had an entourage of young females. It would appear that one of them may have been involved in the rift between the two scientists. The 2012 Annual Meeting of the Heron-Allen Society was entitled "Edward Heron-Allen and some women of his acquaintance"!

Earland's mounting skill, diligence and Heron-Allen's writing, connections and money was a fruitful combination for 25 years. Many publications and the accumulation of the best foraminiferal collection and library of the time was the result. The Heron-Allen and Earland Collection is the backbone of the current collection, in which the 1912 Christmas Card slide is one of the most treasured items. Happy 100th anniversary of the sending of this microfossil Christmas card and more importantly, Happy Christmas to you all!

In July my colleague Tom Hill welcomed a group of Archaeology students from the University of Birmingham to the Museum. On their tour they were shown some microfossil slides collected by retired Museum micropalaeontologist and current Museum Scientific Associate John Whittaker from various important archaeological sites showing evidence of the first humans in Britain. I've picked out three key sites where the microfossils in the collection help with dating the finds and reconstructing the environment and climate of these first human settlements in the British Isles.

John is an Associate Member of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) Project. The project is investigating the timing and nature of human occupation of the British Isles, the technology they used, their behaviour, the environment they lived in and the fauna sharing the landscape. The first site I have chosen was investigated well before the 2001 start of the AHOB Project. 

1. Boxgrove about 500,000 years ago

This reconstruction is based on evidence from archaeological excavations at Boxgrove, funded by English Heritage, directed by Dr Mark Roberts of University College, London. (Image by Peter Dunn, English Heritage Graphics Team, copyright English Heritage and reproduced with permission).

In 1993 a Homo heidelbergensis shin bone was discovered during archaeological excavations at a sand and gravel quarry at Boxgrove, Sussex. At the time this represented the earliest evidence of human occupation in Britain. Well preserved hand axes and butchered animal bones with flint cut marks as well as two human teeth were also discovered at the site.

Ostracods and Foraminifera collected by John Whittaker from Boxgrove indicate a marine raised beach and a later terrestrial deposit with freshwater ponds below chalk cliffs. The microfossils were able to show that the Slindon Sand was deposited in a wholly marine high-energy environment, whereas the Slindon Silt was deposited in a shallow intertidal environment at the margin of a regressive sea (see image above). This sort of information is vital when interpreting the archaeological finds from the site.

2. Pakefield about 750,000 years ago

It has long been suspected that the Cromer Forest Bed exposed on the coast of East Anglia could contain evidence of human activity. In 2000, coastal erosion revealed river sediments containing flint artefacts. In 2000, these stone tools provided the earliest evidence for people in Europe living to the north of the Alps and the findings were published in the journal Nature in 2005.

The oldest artefacts from Pakefield came from the upper levels of estuarine silts where both marine and brackish ostracods and foraminifera have been recovered. Other evidence from mammal, beetle and plant remains suggests a setting on the floodplain of a slow flowing river where marshy areas were common.

The river sediments were deposited during a previously unrecognised warm stage (interglacial) and the presence of several warm loving plants and animals suggests that the climate was similar to that in present day southern Europe.

The interglacial sediments are overlain by a thick sequence of glacial deposits which include till and outwash sands and gravels. These contain reworked (Cretaceous and Neogene) microfossils transported from the North Sea Basin by glaciers.

This is important information as fossils found in these redeposited sediments could be give false indications as to the climatic setting and dating of the any finds.

The extinct freshwater ostracod Scordiscia marinae has been found at both Pakefield and Boxgrove and is characteristic of the Middle Pleistocene period.

3. Happisburgh about 840,000-950,000 years ago

Reconstruction of the site at Happisburgh by John Sibbick. (copyright AHOB/John Sibbick)

Shortly after the Pakefield discoveries, Mike Chambers was out walking his dog at on the beach at Happisburgh (prounced Haze-boro) and discovered a flint handaxe in sediments recently exposed on the foreshore. This remarkable discovery sparked a major programme of geological and archaeological work at the site that has discovered at least four other Palaeolithic sites at Happisburgh.

One of the sites is even older than Pakefield and pushes the timing of the occupation of Britain back by at least 100,000 years. The key geological formation has since been named the Hill House after the local pub!

A Palaeogeographic map of Britain the in Early Pleistocene (about showing the land bridge between Europe and the position of the Thames and Bytham rivers. (Courtesy of Simon Parfitt and the AHOB Project).

At this time there was a land bridge between Britain and France that would have aided migration of humans from continental Europe. The English Channel was first cut about 450,000 years ago following a major flood from a glacially impounded lake in the position of the present day southern North Sea. The Thames did not follow its current course but flowed further north through Norfolk converging with the ancient river Bytham.

The saltmarsh foraminiferal species Jadammina macrescens has been recovered from Happisburgh and is consistent with interpretations that the site is situated near the mouth of the ancient large river, possibly the River Thames.

The foraminiferal species Jadammina macrescens is common in saltmarsh environments.

Pollen and mammal fossils suggest that the climate was similar to that of southern Sweden and Norway of today with extensive conifer forest and grasslands. The floodplains were roamed by herds of mammoth and horses. Foraminifera like the species Ammonia batavus are particularly useful climatic indicators.

The foraminiferal species Ammonia batavus is characteristic of warmer climates.

The dating of the deposit is provided by a combination of mammoth, horse, beetle and vole finds as well as the Middle Pleistocene ostracod Scordiscia marinae. Work by John Whittaker and the AHOB team at a number of other Pleistocene sites across the SE of Britain has increased the potential of ostracods as tools for dating these sediments.

The microfossil collections from these important archaeological sites deposited here at the Museum are an important example of collections that support the findings of a high-profile project that is regularly in the national news.

I have just read an excellent blog article by Nick Poole about the Smithsonian Digitisation Fair in Washington. I gave a talk last December about the cost of mass digitisation at the Annual General Meeting of the Geological Curators' Group at Leeds Museum and feel inspired to jot down the thoughts of a curator in the middle of a mass digitisation project. Here are my 10 steps to mass digitisation dealing with some of the pitfalls, how we have managed to overcome them, a timeline and finally an estimate of the cost of this mass digitisation project.

• Data entry templates

I have been asked so many times if I can provide a template for easy data capture. In my experience, each dataset is different and considerable initial thought is required to design a good data capture structure. I was given 100,000 micropalaeontological records back in 2009 that were created using MS Access on a data entry sheet designed to mirror fields in our KE Software collections management system, KE Emu. You can never spend too much time at the start of the process testing how it works so that the data you capture is useable. It could save weeks if not months of re-formatting at a later stage. This is especially critical if you will later rely on someone else to deliver your data to the web.

The old paper microfossil registers transcribed into an MS Access database at the start of the project

• Getting help with entering data

Two contract data entry clerks were responsible for initial data entry of our old micropalaeontology specimen registers. There has been a lot of debate about whether non-specialists can work as accurately as specialists. I would say that they did an excellent job in transcribing exactly what was written in the registers apart from when the handwriting was poor. I often had trouble interpreting what had been written in these cases! They did it in a fraction of the time it would have taken me. I haven't tried crowdsourcing but I am certainly considering it to help clear some of the electronic backlog registration that has accumulated since we stopped recording everything in pen and ink.

• Cleansing

The data entry clerks were told not to do any interpretation and to transcribe exactly what had been written in the registers. This is fine because we wanted to maintain a good balance between recording the original register data and making informed interpretations. No orginal data has been removed during the migration as we were able to record details in verbatim fields. Considerable cleansing of the data has been neccessary, mainly because the data in our registers is not sufficiently detailed or needs updating to reflect changes in political boundaries. Various other key areas required cleansing and these are dealt with below.

• Maintaining data standards

There are many ways of writing people's names (Miller, C. G., Mr C. G. Miller, Dr C. Giles Miller ... etc) and the hand written registers reflect the fact that there was never a standard followed. Matching records in the MS Access database with those already in KE Emu was therefore difficult to impossible without creating many duplicate entries. To avoid this, we compiled a list of all the names associated with the collection and distilled them down to a list of about 2,000. We then checked these against all current museum records and found that many had already been created by other members of Museum staff. We then linked these records directly back to our data using a internal record number or "irn" so that we could be sure that the correct record in the correct format was being linked to. New records were created if neccessary from the dataset of names we compiled.

Some relatively complete examples of bibliographic citations

• Breaking tasks down into manageable blocks

In some ways we did this with the process we used for people names. I was interested to see in Nick Poole's blog that the Smithsonian are using similar strategies of breaking the tasks down into smaller blocks to achieve larger digitisation goals. Bibliographic citations like those above, have not been complete enough to create records direct from the registers as many use abbreviations, lack vital data or need further research to make them meaningful. I wrote a short subproject proposal for internal funds to hire an assistant for 6 months who created full reference details for all the published specimens in the collection. In reality this took a much shorter time than expected and she was able to help with many other tasks associated with preparing the data for migration into KE Emu.

• Using pre-existing datasets

Again the registers were not complete enough to be able to create identification records from scratch because generic names were often abbreviated or  the original describing author details were missing. There are many biodiversity resources on the internet including the Ellis and Messina Catalogue of microfossil species published by the Micropalaeontology Press. I asked them if I could use their list of microfossil names to help populate our database and for a small fee they provided an MS Excel file of all the species in their database. I imported about 50,000 complete microfossil names into KE Emu and used a simple VLOOKUP function in MS Excel to match these with electronic records created from the paper registers. When no match was achieved I checked why, corrected the data if neccessary or used the data to create a new species records in KE Emu.

• Thinking positively

Shortly after arriving at the Museum in the 1990s I remember being told by a senior member of staff that it would take us 250 years to database the entire collection. Sometimes it's difficult to get started when you feel that your efforts are only just touching the surface or will go off into some black hole of a database that won't ever be useful because hardly any of your hundreds of thousands of objects are registered in it. I have to admit that there have been some times in my career when I have felt like this. My mentor encouraged me to see the bigger picture and the benefits of the project that I was involved in. Bringing data checking up to the top of my list of collections management priorities has paid immediate dividends.

• The bigger picture

There are so many advantages to having the majority of your collection on an electronic database that is searchable via the web. Even though I am already half way though, I have seen real benefits in answering enquiries quickly and easily. Once everything is migrated I will be spotting areas for development of the collection, looking for potential areas for de-accession while gathering hard data on the collection strengths. It is much easier to raise the profile of the collection and encourage visitors to the collections through schemes such as SYNTHESYS when you can send out messages to list-servers advertising a web link to your collection. Another major advantage is that I now have somewhere to associate the many electronic images and documents that relate to my collections and these are being delivered to the web should I choose to.

• Estimating timescales

The initial data entry from the registers took our two clerks 4 months each to input a total of 100,000 records. In 6 months my assistant created full bibliographic records for the whole dataset and added "irn" references for all of the people associated as either collectors, donors or publishers. The process that has taken longest is my data checking, particularly for the scientific accuracy of the fossil names. I would estimate that I spent between 5 and 10 per cent of my time checking data and preparing import sheets since the project started. I am therefore the log jam! At the current rate we are looking at sometime in 2015 for completion of the entire 100,000 record dataset.

Lyndsey Douglas researching full bibliographic microfossil reference details in the Heron-Allen Library

• Costs

Obviously it would be imprudent to show a breakdown of salary costs here so I will just say that at Christmas last year when 36,000 KE Emu records had been created, the cost came to roughly one pound per record. This includes the Micropalaeontology Press fee, salary costs for initial data entry, an assistant for 6 months and for 10 per cent of my time. I have not included other expenses like building and IT overheads. I expect that the final cost per record at the end of the project will be slightly less than a pound per record as the major expenditure of salary for the data entry people and the 6 month posts are now accounted for. The final cost will depend on how long it takes me to finish checking and migrating the data.

I may be only half way through importing the 100,000 records, but I would like to think that this project can provide some valuable benchmark data for those planning future projects, suggest some ways of making the process quicker and help with forecasting costs and timeframes.

Postdoctoral research visitor Ceran Sekeryapan from Turkey has been studying lacustrine ostracods from our collections over the past week with the intention of adding records to the database of Non-Marine Ostracod Distribution in Europe (NODE). This database, combined with details of modern climate records and Geographical Information System (GIS) software is increasingly being used to reconstruct past air temperatures.

Cypris pubera, a freshwater ostracod (courtesy of Dr David Horne).

• Ostracods and temperature

It has long been known that some non-marine ostracod species prefer colder while others prefer warmer climates. The Mutual Ostracod Temperature Range (MOTR) method, developed by Dr David Horne at Queen Mary University of London, calibrates each species by calculating the range of air temperatures that they can tolerate. This is done by plotting the present geographical distribution of each species and using detailed modern records of climate in these locations to calculate a seasonal air temperature range.

Other factors affect the distribution of ostracods, for example the chemisty, depth and hydrology of different water bodies harbouring ostracods.

• Reconstructing past climates

Many species present in the modern day are also present in the Quaternary fossil record covering the last 2.5 million years. The MOTR method plots air temperature ranges of each species present in a fossil assemblage so that a mutual temperature range can be derived.

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).

The same species are plotted for July and show temperatures similar or slightly warmer than the present, a seasonal conclusion in general agreement with studies on plant macrofossils, pollen and molluscs (courtesy of Dr David Horne).

• Developing our collections

Ceran has been identifying species part of a large microfossil collection donated in 1991 by Prof. John Neale of the University of Hull. As well as providing new identifications and ratifying previous interpretations, she will provide new latitude and longitude references for the sites that our material has come from using a method called georeferencing. Modern maps and available resources like Google Earth are used to provide up to date latitude and longitude readings that were not present in the original data.

Coverage of Recent non marine ostracod records in the OMEGA database (courtesy of Dr David Horne).

• The global picture

Key data from the NODE database and other large datasets from Canada, USA, southern Africa and Japan are being assembled in OMEGA (Ostracod Metadatabase of Environmental and Geographical Attributes). This will facilitate improved calibrations as well as biogeographical and biodiversity research. Details from large museum collections like ours are continually being used in this work.

• The future

Testing and refinement of the MOTR method can only make this climate interpretation tool more accurate in the future. Ceran will be applying this method and gathering more data from sites in Turkey. Contributions to the OMEGA database are also invited as part of a citizen science project. Museum collections are also set to play a vital role in this study.

The Museum radiolarian collection makes up considerably less than 1% of the total microfossil collection but is proving very popular at the moment. Last February we loaned some slides to accompany an exhibition by Irene Kopelman at the Gasworks Gallery and this week I processed a loan for Artist/PhD Researcher Gemma Anderson. Glass models of radiolarians made in 1889 by the father and son partnership of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka are also being prepared for something special that will be happening later in the year at the Museum.

A scanning electron microscope image of part of the fossil radiolarian residue on loan to Gemma Anderson. The tip of a standard 0.65mm diameter dressmaking pin is included for scale.

Radiolarians are single celled organisms (Protozoa) that secrete tiny skeletons of opaline silica. They are present in the oceans of today from the tropics to the Arctic and live anywhere from near the surface to depths of several hundred metres. They range in size from 0.03mm to 2mm and mainly have a solitary floating lifestyle (planktonic), although some are colonial.

The living cell that produces the skeleton consists of a central mass of cytoplasm surrounded by a peripheral layer called the extracapsulum. Sometimes the extracapsulum contains bubble like structures that aid flotation and occasionally algal symbionts. The cells also produce radiating fine structures called axopodia. In some species these are contractile and may have been used to move organic particles closer to the extracapsulum for digestion.

Fine strands called fusules connect the extracapsulum with the inner capsule and these are unique to the Radiolaria. Modern radiolarians are subdivided based on the microanatomy of the central capsule whereas fossil forms are classified on skeletal characteristics. The living and fossil classification schemes are not intergrated as a result.

A Blaschka glass model of the radiolarian Aulosphaera elegantissima Haeckel, 1862. The central mass of cytoplasm, the axiopoda and the spherical silica shell are magnified about 500 times and reproduced in glass.

A collection of 18 radiolarian and heliozoan Blaschka glass models were acquired by the Museum in 1889. The Blaschkas made 10 different varieties of Radiolaria representing two of the three main subdivisions. They also offered three varieties of Heliozoa (literally sun animals). These look superficially like radiolarians but differ in the arrangement of the pseudo/axo-podia and the cellular structure in the central capsulum.

The illustration of A. elegantissima in Ernst Haeckel's 1862 monograph on the Radiolaria that provded the inspiration for their work.

Radiolarians are very beautiful to look at but are also scientifically significant. The have a long geological record stretching back more than 500 million years to the Cambrian Period. This makes them very useful for determining the age of sedimentary rocks that contain them as well as giving details of past climates and oceanographic conditions.

The Museum's radiolarian collection of 1,500 slides is small but historically very significant. Ernst Haeckel described 2,775 new radiolarian species in his 1887 monograph on the Challenger radiolarians [PDF] but did not define any type specimens. A set of teaching slides made by Haeckel in the Museum collection is the only set of plankton slides available from the Challenger Expedition. Residues in the Ocean Bottom Sediment Collection also contain important comparative specimens that help define Haeckel's species concepts in the absense of type specimens.

A close up of part of the radiolarian residue on loan to Gemma Anderson. It is from Miocene Barbados Marl which is roughly 15 million years old.

It will be very interesting to see the results of Gemma's study; I will comment on this blog with any details. I would also be very excited to see a Blaschka radiolarian model on display in the Museum galleries. I promise a more detailed post on the Museum Blaschka Collection in the future with a very interesting story involving a team of archivists, curators, conservators and exhibition staff (with some C-T scanning too).

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 our 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.