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NAMS
NEWSLETTER May98
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Last Modified: May 10, 1998
This year's BMS Foraminiferal Group Spring Meeting was held April 24 in London at the Natural History Museum. Participants were drawn from an unusually wide field, including both professionals and students. Commercial consultants were also represented in the audience, notably Kronos Consultants who kindly funded the refreshments. The talks were followed by lively discussions that continued into the social breaks and spilled over into the post-meeting celebrations at Imperial College's Southside Pub. Highlights of the meeting for this author included Ben Horton's presentation of a complex multivariate transfer-function-based study of ancient sea-levels using peritidal foraminiferal assemblages, Jochim Schonfield's paper on deep sea benthic foraminiferal faunas in high energy areas, and the discussion that followed Carl Jenkins' thought-provoking paper on putative foraminiferal test linings recently recovered from the Kimmeridge Shale in Dorset. Complete abstracts for the presentations are available at the BMS web page and examples of Ann Holbourn's beautiful colour images of deep-sea benthic foraminifera (an update of which she also presented at the meeting) can be viewed at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/ palaeontology/palaeovision/PVGallery.html.
The following day Prof. John Murray led a field trip to Hamble Estuary just to the east of Southampton. For the last two years a group of benthic foraminiferal ecologists led by Prof. Murray has been collecting replicate samples from two intertidal localities to study the changing patterns of benthic foraminiferal species dominance in the context of measured changes in the local environment. This is one of the first long-term studies of its kind. In addition to visiting the general areas where Prof. Murray's team conducted their studies the BMS group also had the opportunity to collect samples of living foraminifer from three different salt marsh environments that border the estuary and to take cores from two of these environments. Look for field trip images to appear in the BMS web site.
Eight sets of DSDP/ODP strewn slides have been prepared from about 3,000 core samples chosen for radiolaria from important sites drilled during the Deep Sea Drilling Project. To increase the usage of one of these sets, ODP proposes to offer it on loan to an institution that can show an expertise in the field of deep sea radiolaria. The proponent institution must demonstrate a willingness to curate and make available this collection to specialists from the scientific community and should provide space, microscopes, a computer, and a collection of DSDP/ODP volumes for the visitors to use. They should also suggest contributions that they can make towards the general improvement of the MRC collections. Possible contributions include: (1) play an active role in selecting additional samples to improve the coverage of the collections; (2) play an active role in development of image databases under the guidance of the Scientific Measurements Panel; and (3) contribute toward the preparation of the MRC samples.
Further information can be obtained from Brian T. Huber at U.S National
Museum (see address in below article).
Have you outgrown your collections storage space? The Micropaleontological Reference Center curators have a solution! Please contact your local MRC curator if you want to send any unused, retired, or orphaned DSDP and ODP microfossil samples to a new home. Any accompanying documentation for sample depths (preferably electronic format) would facilitate curation of these samples. MRC locations and contact information are listed below.
U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM
Dr. Brian T. Huber
Department of Paleobiology
NHB-121
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C. 20560, U.S.A.
Phone: 202-786-2658
Fax: 202-786-2832
huber.brian@nmnh.si.edu
U.S. WEST COAST
Dr. Annika Sanfilippo
Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
Univ. of California-San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0220 USA
Phone: 619-534-2049
Fax: 619-534-0784
asanfilippo@ucsd.edu
U.S. GULF COAST
Dr. John Firth
Ocean Drilling Program
Texas A & M University
1000 Discovery Drive
College Station, TX 77845-9547
Phone: 409-845-0507
Fax: 409-845-0876
john_firth@odp.tamu.edu
WESTERN EUROPE
Dr. Michael Knappertsbusch
Geology Department
Natural History Museum
CH-4001 Basel, Switzerland
Phone: 41-61-266-5564
Fax: 41-61-266-5546
knappertsbus@ubaclu.unibas.ch
JAPAN
Dr. Yoshihiro Tanimura
Department of Geology
National Science Museum
3-23-1 Hyakunin-cho, Shinjuku-ku
National Science Museum
Tokyo 169, Japan
Phone: 81-3-5332-7165
Fax: 81-3-3364-7104
tanimura@kahaku.go.jp
NEW ZEALAND
Dr. Percy Strong
Inst. of Geological & Nuclear Sciences
Andrews Avenue
Lower Hutt, New Zealand
E-mail: p.strong@gns.cri.nz
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA Diatom/Nannofossil Subloan Center
Dr. David Watkins
Department of Geology
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588 USA
Phone: 402-472-2648
Fax: 402-472-4917
E-mail: dwatkins@unl.edu
GERMANY
Foraminifera/Radiolarian Subloan Center
Walter Hale & Barbara Donner
Universitat Bremen
Fachbereich 5, Geowissenschaften
Klagenfurter Str.
28334 Bremen Germany
walter_hale@odp.tamu.edu
RUSSIA
Foraminifera/Diatom Subloan Center
Dr. Ivan Basov
Institute of the Lithosphere
Academy of Sciences
Staromonetny Pereylok, 22
Moscow 109180, Russia
basov@ilsan.igem.msk.su