Through The Sandglass

Black sands, black crystals, and a green queen

 
Pelabuhan Ratu, a sweeping beach on the south coast of Java pounded continuously by the breakers of the Indian Ocean. A popular destination, but one that I have not visited – today’s feature comes courtesy of, and with thanks to, Carol Banks, the latest recruit to my growing army of sand-snatchers.

Pelabuhan Ratu means “Queen’s harbour,” and the place comes with myths and legends galore – but more of that later: for now, the sand. The most popular and developed part of the long beach is a typical tropical white, but great stretches are also gloomily black and less attractive – except to an arenophile, for this is a lovely sand.

I chose the Google Earth image above to show the less-developed section, the river clearly bringing its cargo of black sands down to the coast. When the sand is wet, it is truly a dark charcoal-grey colour, but dry it out and it takes on a speckled brown and grey character – not particularly attractive at first glance. But look closely, and you will see transparent quartz grains, glittering like diamonds amongst the dull fragments of dark volcanic rock. Then there are the grains of the local limestones, together with a few shell fragments, shattered by the surf.

Looking more closely, those grains of transparent volcanic quartz really are beautiful:

 
A number of them, dramatically the one at the upper right, show conchoidal fractures. These are where a material breaks along curved surfaces, often complex and rippled, very much the form of a mussel shell, hence the name (from the Greek for mussel or cockle). This behaviour is typical of amorphous materials such as glass and its natural volcanic version, obsidian – it’s this kind of fracturing that is exploited in the making of obsidian and flint tools. Strictly amorphous materials such as glass have no internal structure to guide fractures; this is not true of quartz, but its mineral structure, and the strength of the bonds between the silicon and oxygen atoms, make it behave very much as if it were amorphous.

The apple-green jewels amongst the grains are the mineral olivine, a common constituent of the kinds of volcanic materials of which Java is constructed. Shine the microscope light through the sand, and the glowing glory of these grains is revealed:

But, in the first group of microscope photos above, there are also very distinctive tiny black grains, clustering together, looking vaguely metallic, and often of a very regular, geometric, shape. What are they? Well, the answer is easily discovered by passing a magnet over the surface of the sand – these little grains defy gravity and hurl themselves upwards on to the magnet’s surface, reasonable behaviour for magnetite.

Magnetite is an iron oxide, chemical formula Fe₃O₄, and is another common constituent of the local volcanic rocks; it’s the most magnetic of all minerals, and is the key to the lodestone, used for early compasses. Left free to fulfil its ambitions, magnetite can form large clusters of glorious crystals such as this specimen, up to ten centimetres across, from one of the mines in St. Lawrence County New York, and in the collection of the New York State Academy of Mineralogy. Unfortunately, since it is a valuable source of iron, magnetite has a social dark side: because it is heavy, the waves of the beach concentrate the grains into placer deposits, and, along the south coast of Java these have been the source of sometimes violent conflicts between developers and local farming communities. But back to the bright side of magnetite, so to speak.

Because these grains do form placer deposits, a little amateur panning in the kitchen separated them out from the lighter grains (I could, of course, have used my magnet, but that wouldn’t have been so much fun). Here are some family portraits:

The amazing thing is that so many of these grains are hardly worn at all, and their original crystal shape is preserved. Look at the one that seems like two pyramids stuck together – that’s the original octohedral form of the mineral, a single, almost perfect, crystal of magnetite. Raw diamonds are often octohedral, but these grains are just humble iron oxide – beautiful nevertheless, don’t you think?

So, what about the queen whose harbour, or bay, is Pelabuhan Ratu? Well, this stretch of the Java coast is the haunt of Nyai Roro Kidul, the mythical Queen of the Indian Ocean in these parts, and a shape-shifting spirit of Javanese and Sundanese folklore. She is, of course, beautiful, but she is powerful, able to take your soul on a whim. Various versions of the legend describe how a beautiful princess was struck with black magic by a jealous rival in the palace and developed a horrible skin disease. She fled to the ocean and plunged into the waves, where she was cured and crowned queen by the marine spirits and demons. Her sacred colour is green, and there is a local belief that wearing green will anger Nyai Roro Kidul – so, arenophiles, should you visit Pelabuhan Ratu, please choose your outfit with this in mind.

Guest post: a gallery of sand photographers' styles

 
Kurt Meyer writes:

SHOOTING SAND

For the last 15 years, on and off, I have been collecting sand. The “off” times resulted from not having an answer to the question, ‘what do I do with all of this sand?’ I have tried various methods of displaying my sands as you can see below. Two-ounce bottles with overhead lighting being the best. 

But the only people who could regularly view the display were my wife, the neighbors, some family and my dog, Zena, and she could care less. In fact, anything that draws attention away from her is not well tolerated.

Things got interesting again, however, when I decided to try my hand at getting pictures of my sands. At first, I tried a digital microscope and although it turned out to be an interesting exercise, the quality just wasn’t there. The edges, for example, are usually blurry, the definition is often lacking and the color is rarely true. These problems would even be too much for a Photoshop package. You can, however, get a good idea of what is lurking in your sand sample at 20x, as in this image of sand from Fintragh beach, but it is not suitable for framing.

Today I still use the digital microscope but only for screening sand samples. It is pretty good at predicting which sands will be “photogenic.”

My first foray into serious sand macrophotography began with my purchase of a used Nikon D70. The following picture was taken with that camera body and a 60mm 1:1 lens. Even though the sensor is only a 6.1MP it still provides a pretty good image. This photo is of one of the famous green sand beaches in Hawaii, Pocket Beach to be exact. The olivine, lava and coral make a striking image [at the head of this post - MW]. 

At any rate, this new photographic endeavor answered the big question, ‘what do I do with all of this sand?’ Answer, SHOOT IT.

There are a number of photographers who do outstanding sand photography. I would like to showcase several of them. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. This only reflects the photographers that have posted images on my website, Tropics of Sand. I will attempt to compare and contrast their styles. As you will see, the top photographers all have their own style. Over and above the camera equipment used, the thing that defines a photographer is their approach to getting the shot. All of the images that you will see below are unique to the photographer. I can tell a Heider photo from a Couette and a Sepp from a Kenney in the blink of an eye. I am sure that you will, too.

SAND PHOTOGRAPHERS

(click images to enlarge)

Leo Kenney: Large field, great clarity

Leo is a veteran of creating outstanding sand calendars and posters. He has a prodigious collection thanks to the fact that he has a legion of former students who dutifully send sands to him from their travels (cheater). Leo tends to zoom out a bit which produces a larger field than most. He uses a Canon 1-5x lens that allows him to get that clarity. Leo’s Picasa Web albums are here.

 
Clockwise from top left: Miller’s Point, Cape Town, South Africa; Monticello, Corsica; Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa; Rye, New Hampshire. Center: Cap Lardier, France.

Siim Sepp: Great definition of full field shots and individual grains.

Siim also uses the Canon 1-5x lens although Siim does more close up work. He uses a full field for some of his photos but he also shows exploded views of individual grains of sand elements. Siim has a “how-to” on the mechanics of getting a sand photo on his website, Sand Atlas. On that site, he also provides geological information on sand composition that is very informative.

 
Clockwise from top left: Diamond Head, Hawaii; Sapphire crystals, Songe, Southern Tanzania; Zakynthos, Greece; Waddell Sea floor (-3500m), Antarctica (Globigerina forams, yellow circles);  Center: Glass Beach, Kaui, Hawaii.

 

Alexander Heider: Tight shots, great color.

Herr Heider gets excellent close ups of his sands without sacrificing detail. As you can see in this series of sands from Ireland he is able to keep detail at close range. He also agonizes over white balance which gives very exacting color to his images. His tight shots and true color make his photos stand out.

 
Clockwise from top left, an Irish selection: Ardmore, Waterford; Ventry Strand, Dingle Bay; Dooagh, Achill Island, Fanore, Galway Bay; Center: Fintragh Bay, Killybegs.

 

Alain Couette: Soft shots, great detail.

Alain will not reveal what he uses as a lighting source but whatever it is, it gives his photos a “soft” look and it is also rich in detail. Alain has numerous images on his website, Arénophile ou Psammophile? He has sand pix plus images of forams that are very interesting. Alain has a distinctive style that I would recognize anywhere.

 Clockwise from top left: Boracay Island, Angol, Philippines; Nusa Lembongan, Ceningan Island, Indonesia; Rio Grande do Norte, Fernando de Noronha Island, Brazil; Luzon island, Nasugbu, Philippines; Center: Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

 

Carla Lagendijk: Daylight shots, great variety and picture perfect color.

Carla is one of the pre-eminent sand photographers today. As you can see her shots are very rich in detail. This is not due to the lens but the fact she shoots her photos in daylight, the sun illuminating every nook and cranny which in turn provides outstanding definition. The other thing that separates Carla from the pack is her prodigious collection. She has sand from anywhere you can imagine which greatly increases the chances of having outstanding material to work with. Below are 4 shots that typify her style, and of course, no examination of Carla’s work would be complete without a sample of one of her “selections”. These are selected bits of coral, forams, shells, etc., from various sand samples. I hesitate to use more than one for the simple reason that they are too awesome. If you can look at these all day, why would you look at anything else?

 Clockwise from top left: Bahia de Samana, Dominican Republic; Myrdal, Vik, Iceland (olivine and obsidian); Al Bustan, Oman;  Brétignolles, France; Center: Enubuj Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands.

 

Kurt Meyer: Exploded views, contrasting backgrounds.

I now use a Nikon d1500 with the same 60mm lens. What I like to do with my photos is create an edge where heavy minerals or carbonate elements can be isolated from the main body of sand allowing for a better view of the individual grains. This has been dubbed the “black corner” technique. The 5100 has a 16.2 MP sensor that will enable you to enlarge photos without losing definition. Also, I use black or other colored glass as a background to provide contrast.

 
Clockwise from top left: Cape Point, South Africa; Dondra Beach, India; Mardakyan, Azerbaijan; Grand Ile, France; Center: Point Reef, Vanua Levu, Fiji.

 

You can see more photos by all of the above photographers on tropicsofsand.com. I would love to add more images this weekend but Zena has other ideas.

 

[All images reproduced with the photographer’s permission, composite formats by MW.

Kurt is based in Pennsylvania, and writes that while he has been photographing sand for the last three years, he has collected it for “15 odd years.” Nothing odd about that as far as I’m concerned, but perhaps those years were odd in other ways, and sand collecting represented an opportunity for normality. Interestingly, he enjoys diving for samples. Anyway, thanks Kurt for all the effort in putting this together – and thanks to all the arenophile photographers who contributed to this piece.]

Sunday sand: Ngobaran

 
Sand from perhaps the smallest “beach” that I have visited and sampled. One of the items on the varied agenda of a recent long weekend in Central Java (varied in the way that part of the world uniquely and fascinatingly offers) was an exploration of a few of the small beaches on Java’s south coast. My intention was to avoid the crowds at the large, popular, beaches (the day of the visit being Sunday) and find a couple of the small coves that nestle between the spectacular cliffs of that part of the coast. The first destination was Ngobaran – and it certainly fulfilled the criterion of a “small beach.” Dramatic and rugged limestone cliffs face the incoming waves of the Indian Ocean, and the constant kinetics of the place leave little opportunity for sand grains to gather. But, in a small area sheltered by massive boulders, a patch of coarse sand had accumulated:

And here it is, the usual mix of local ingredients, including many of the little spherical forams, so common in these parts and looking for all the world like natural ball-bearings:

In detail, the varied patterns and textures are endless:

 
And, as further geo-entertainment, the weathering of the limestone boulders produced a starkly rugged form of tafoni: 

And, as I watched the Indian Ocean waves roll in, I was inspired to play with the the high-speed burst function of my camera and experiment with catching the action – nothing to do directly with sand, so please excuse my self-indulgence:

 

Sunday Sand Selection - and my new toy

 
Last September, my report on a day out in Java was illustrated with the output from my new Sony a55 digital SLR camera (although strictly, it’s not an SLR because it uses Sony’s remarkable translucent mirror technology) – it’s an amazing camera that I’m still learning about. I bought it along with a superb Sony all-purpose wide-angle to telephoto lens, but recently became seduced by the idea that another lens might broaden my scope further – I settled on a macro. Now these things don’t come cheap, but Minolta’s AF 100mm/2.8 macro had excellent reviews and, given that it is now discontinued, could be found on the secondhand market. Now in Indonesia, that’s an interesting market, and an Indonesian photography enthusiast (a slight understatement) friend located several available possibilities and proceeded to negotiate on my behalf – for several weeks. The result was a very acceptable and reasonable price for what is a great piece of kit – it is a genuine 1:1 macro lens. For those interested, here’s the camera and the lens:

Now shooting with a macro takes some learning and experimenting, and I am just beginning. But as you might have guessed, one of the subjects I was interested in experimenting with is – yes, sand. And above are some initial results – a local selection, clockwise from top left: Bako (Sarawak), Bali (Cemagi), Bali (Jimbaran), Komodo, Satonda (Sumbawa), Satonda again, and, centre, Lombok. This is a reasonably high resolution image, so click on it to see more detail. I’m reasonably pleased as a start; I have been well advised by Siim Sepp’s excellent macro-photography post on his Sand Atlas blog. I had tried to get hold of a remote shutter release for the camera (even with a tripod, pressing the shutter vibrates the camera), but with no success – but I found a very clever suggestion on a photography website – just use the self-timer.

You might have noticed the little spheres in the Bali Jimbaran Beach photo – well, here they are, beautiful little foraminifera:

 
And what makes the sands of Komodo pink? Well, these soft corals do:

 

[Thanks, Connie (one of my army of dedicated arenokleptomaniacs), for the Jimbaran sample.]

Sunday Sand: Wrangellia

 
A hundred million years ago, over the western ocean horizon, loomed yet another impending tectonic disaster. A gigantic plateau of volcanic rock was lurching its way eastwards towards an inevitable collision with North America, the oceanic plate that carried it being consumed beneath the continent. The plateau was far too massive to be digested, instead winding up accreted – welded, glued, uplifted – to an ever-expanding continent to form, amongst other things, the backbone of what is today Vancouver Island.

This collision and continent-building event took place along the entire stretch of western Canada and Alaska, one chapter in the saga of tectonic chaos that would continue along the whole margin of North America to the present day. It wasn’t simply one plateau of volcanic rocks that blundered into its final resting place, but a complex of oceanic bits and pieces, deep marine sediments, cherts, limestones, geo-flotsam and geo-jetsam, different terranes that have come to be grouped together under the name Wrangellia, after some fine examples in Alaska’s Wrangell Mountains:

 

In the vicinity of Vancouver Island, the Wrangellia terrane was uplifted and rapidly eroded, sand and mud pouring off the new mountains to form deltas and marine deposits, shallow and deep, accumulating to a thickness of five kilometers. This pile of sediments is referred to as the Nanaimo Group, and underlies much of the south-eastern coast of Vancouver Island, where a colleague of mine is lucky enough to live (when he’s not being a colleague of mine and working in Indonesia).

 
He looks out eastwards over the deliciously named Salish Sea to the hills of Lasqueti Island and the mainland, across a beach that is a broad bench, strewn with cobbles, pebbles, and gravel – between which can be found today’s Sunday Sand.

 
And, as usual, this sand consists of local ingredients, detritus of Wrangellia – and the detritus of the detritus of Wrangellia. It’s a young, angular, coarse sand, the grains not yet well-travelled – the photos are of the sample sieved to collect only the sand-sized fraction. The grains are of grey and greenish volcanic rock, originally erupted on to the floor of the ancestral Pacific Ocean, 200 million years ago, deep-sea sediments, red chert fragments, bits of limestone, the odd quartz grain, the occasional piece of broken shell.

The story of Wrangellia, recounted by this sand, was but an early episode in an ongoing series of events in which successive wandering foreign tectonic chunks accreted themselves to Western Canada – the Pacific Rim Terrane, the Crescent Terrane. And, as this cross-section shows, it’s still going on today. Out in the ocean, far to the west of Vancouver Island, lies the true edge of North America, sediments and oceanic material scraped off the top of the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate, in the fullness of time to make their contribution to the territorial expansion of Vancouver Island.

 

[Illustrations from Steven Earle’s The Geology of British Columbia and Vancouver Island – if you, like me, can’t get to the original, try the Google “quick view” version ; for more on Wrangellia, see this University of British Columbia site; and thanks, Brett, for the sand!]

Abrasive Sunday Sand

 
All in all, it’s been an abrasive week. No, I’m not referring to my day job, but rather an emerging theme that started with my last post on the stories of three indefatigable women and a mystery Gobi sand. So far, there have been two very interesting responses to my question of what the mineral content of this “special sand” might be that made it so prized for polishing jade (and I’m also following up on other suggestions): Howard Allen helpfully defines some constraining criteria in terms of hardness and density (we must be dealing with something heavy enough to form a placer deposit, and hard enough – but not too hard – to polish a tough material like jade). Richard Bready – knowledgeable and stimulating as always – points to the work of a researcher at The British Museum whom I should contact, and sources that mention corundum, quartz, and garnet.

Earlier in the week, I heard from Siim Sepp, a graduate student of geology at the University of Tartu in Estonia, who alerted me to his areno-blog, Sandatlas, which he has been expanding into a wide-ranging and informative source for a variety of geo-topics. Browsing around Siim’s site, I was struck by one of the images in his gallery, above. This stunning sand is from the area of the Emerald Creek garnet district in the panhandle of Idaho, where garnets from sand- to golf ball-size occur in placer deposits that, organised by the Forest Service, can be visited by the public for a “mine your own garnets” day out. Garnets have been used since antiquity as both gemstones and abrasives, and the latter continues to be a widespread application today; Emerald Creek, in addition to being a Forest Service recreational area, is still one of the leading sources of industrial garnets in North America, producing a range of product sizes for everything from serious sand-blasting to fine polishing via water-jet cutting.

There are quite a few different “species” of the mineral group collectively referred to as garnet; they are all silicate minerals (strictly, nesosilicates or orthosilicates), but their composition (and colour) varies, with different sites within the crystal structure being occupied by iron, magnesium, calcium, aluminium, and chromium. Nevertheless, they all belong to a single group because they all have the same crystal form – the crystals are isometric, their internal structural symmetry being that of a cube. In garnets, these highly symmetrical internal building blocks most commonly organise themselves into the overall shape of a dodecahedron, but other related shapes can also form. The combination of colour and symmetry produces some truly stunning crystals, such as this one from Emerald Creek, the big one being 2.5 centimetres across (image from Exceptional Minerals):

 
One particular form, the star garnet, is the State Gem of Idaho; these extremely rare specimens are examples of asterism, the appearance of a luminous star shape as a result of tiny fibrous crystals of the mineral rutile (titanium dioxide) being included in the structure:

Garnets have a torrid geological history, born at high temperatures and pressures deep in the earth’s crustal kitchen, and, as a result, showing up at the surface in metamorphic, or, less commonly, igneous rocks. The garnets of the Emerald Creek district originate from sediments deposited around 1.5 billion years ago, buried, cooked, and rudely ejected back to the surface; weathering has liberated the tough garnet crystals to be concentrated in the stream placer deposits, but the original hard rock has also been extensively mined for not only garnets but a wide variety of minerals and metals.

So, not a solution yet to the Gobi mystery, but, for me at least, an interesting detour from the daily grind.

Sunday sand: Komodo pink

No, these photos are not photoshopped – these are the real colours of this beach on Komodo Island:

 
Simply spectacular, macroscopically and microscopically, and a place to just wander, as I did – for some time. And what’s going on under the waves I described – with movies – in an earlier post.

The sand, when dry, has a light pinkish tan colour, but the dramatic hues are on display when it’s wet. The colour comes from tiny fragments of bright red coral which, when mixed with grains of quartz, shell fragments, our old friends foraminifera, and other biogenic detritus, create this glorious overall pink sand. Beachcomb a little, and there are the coarser fragments of coral, and, in the storm zone at the top of the beach, genuine chunks:

This is one of the so-called soft corals, the alcyonarians, specifically, and for obvious reasons, the “organ pipe coral,” Tubipora musica. From ARKive.org:

Unlike most corals, it is not colourful polyps that make organ pipe corals attractive, but instead, their dark red coloured skeleton. The skeleton is composed of thin tubes, or pipes, (hence its common name), which are two millimetres in diameter and cemented together by horizontal plates at intervals of several centimetres. Unless the colony has been damaged, a mass of greenish-brown or grey polyps, each with eight tentacles, obscures the skeleton. These colonies can form mounds up to 50 centimetres in diameter and may dominate large patches of reef. There are at least two species, only one of which is named; Tubipora musica. The structure of the tentacles of different colonies of T. musica varies greatly; some have broad feather-like pinnae (tiny projections) down the sides of the tentacles, whilst others have no pinnae at all.

I must have seen some of these on my snorkelling excursions, but, being no expert, failed to make the correlation with the beach; my excuse is, as the description above mentions, in the living corals the tentacles completely obscure the skeleton:

 
The organ pipe corals are much-prized, particularly for making jewellery and ornaments and by owners of salt water aquaria – for both the easily maintained living corals and for the decorative qualities of the bright red skeletons. As a result, the colonies are routinely harvested and dynamited and Tubipora musica is classified as Near Threatened (NT) on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and listed on Appendix II of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. So, a slightly sobering thought – does the dramatic debris of Komodo’s pink beaches originate entirely from natural mortality or does the activity of illegal trade make a contribution?

 

[Living coral picture credit]

Sunday sand: ashes to ashes - and concrete

 
Continuing with my day out in Java, and geo-story-telling along the Cipimingkis River. The outcrops in the river are spectacular, a continuous tale of Miocene seas coming and going, leaving behind a sedimentary testament. The layers of rock crossing the river can easily be seen as the channel winds through the rice paddies in this Google Earth image:

 
I noted what a strange river the Cipimingkis is, a river not only bereft of sediment, but one whose channels have been mutilated by the excavation and removal of that sediment – sand and pebbles – leaving only pools between bare rock and the huge boulders that bear witness to the power of the river in flood.

It took me a while, but I eventually found small accumulations of sand that had not been stolen from the system, and there it is at the head of this post. A fairly nondescript-looking grey-brown sand that nevertheless tells, as usual, a tale. Typical of an immature river sand, there are grains of every size (it’s poorly-sorted), and, with the exception of the occasional grain of pale limestone, is made up entirely of bits of volcanic rock. Which is hardly surprising, for the Cipimingkis drains northward down from the slopes of one of the great volcanic edifices of western Java, Gunung (Mount) Gede. Looking upstream in this photo, in the distant haze (the contrast enhanced so as to make it visible) looms the huge – and active – volcanic massif, its location shown in the satellite image.

 

So these sands record one side of the battle of the mountains – destruction by erosion versus rejuvenation by eruption. The other thing to note about these young sands, only recently torn from the volcanic hinterlands and transported but a short distance, is that the grains are little worn, and preserve their sharp edges and angular character. They make an ideal ingredient for concrete and hence the thriving business in their wholesale extraction: the roads leading to this area are lined with piles of sand and laden trucks constantly labour ponderously along those roads. Volcanic ashes to alluvial ashes, to concrete – undoubtedly to be, one day, liberated again.

 

[Satellite image of Java from http://www.geoinfo.ait.ac.th/modis/modday2008.php]

Sunday sand: Lang's Beach, New Zealand

I'm off on a short fieldtrip today - yes, actually looking at rocks, and sandstones in particular (undoubtedly more of that after the event). So a brief post on what is, to me, a beautiful sand from Lang's Beach on the far northeastern coast of New Zealand's North Island. The sand was collected by friends who had the good fortune to visit. Here in Indonesia, if you are asked a question such as "have you been there?" (or even of an eighty-year-old spinster "are you married?") the response is rarely a simple "no", but rather, and delighfully optimistically, "belum", not yet. Saya belum pergi ke Lang's Beach - I haven't been there yet, but it's on my list.

[Image from Goodground.com]

Sunday sand: 150 million years agglutinating

A couple of weeks ago, Sunday sand exhibited some portraits of foraminifera (forams). I will readily admit that I find these critters entrancing, and utterly fascinating in their diversity and ingenuity. And, of course, given their ubiquity in the world’s oceans, they play leading roles as biogenic components of our planet’s sands; and recent research suggests that there are perhaps 20-50 times as many foram species as previously thought. So I was delighted when Michael Hesemann took the trouble to comment at length and point readers to the Foraminifera.eu Project. I have spent some time browsing around this great site and its beautiful images, and have hardly scratched the surface; however, I was particularly attracted to the gallery of type specimens of agglutinated foraminifera, those clever little (and not so little) critters that build their homes out of any stuff that is available – sand grains, silt grains, other critters’ shells.

I wrote a post a year ago on forams, and, in particular, the agglutinating ones, with an emphasis on the spectacular collection derived from the pioneering voyage of HMS Challenger. I have made a selection from Michael Hesemann’s site for exhibition today (including the original descriptions scales, and credits), and a number of them come from the Challenger collections at London’s Natural History Museum; most are from today’s oceans, but the collection finishes with examples from the Late Jurassic of Switzerland – forams have been agglutinating for more than 150 million years.

	Rhabdammina abyssorum M. Sars, 1869     Class: Astrorhizata  Subclass: Astrorhizana  Order: Astrorhizida  Family: Rhabdamminidae Taxon Profile; found at South China Sea  off territorial waters from 3465m depth Geological Time: recent specimen provided by Prof. Jenö Nagy Collection:  Prof. J. Nagy View of one specimen of Rhabdammina abyssorum M. Sars, 1869 detailed view with diatoms as construction material (image at the head of this post)
Hormosinelloides guttifer (Brady, 1884)     Class: Nodosariata  Subclass: Hormosinana  Order: Hormosinida  Family: Hormosininae Taxon Profile; found at Challenger Station 323   off territorial waters from 3475m depth, at 50.47 W, 35. 39 S Geological Time: recent  Images are shown with permission and thanks to Michael A. Kaminski, the Natural History Museum London (copyright-holder) and Grzybowski Foundation. The images are made with the NHM Palaeontology imaging system. HMS Challenger Collection View of one specimen of Hormosinelloides guttifer (Brady, 1884)
	Hormosina globulifera Brady, 1879     Class: Nodosariata  Subclass: Hormosinana  Order: Hormosinida  Family: Hormosininae Taxon Profile; found at Challenger Station 246   off territorial waters from 3749m depth Geological Time: recent Images are shown with permission and thanks to Michael A. Kaminski, the Natural History Museum London (copyright-holder) and Grzybowski Foundation. The images are made with the NHM Palaeontology imaging system. HMS Challenger Collection View of one specimen of Hormosina globulifera Brady, 1879
Discobotellina biperforata 1     Holotype of a specimen of Discobotellina biperforata in the Collections of the Natural History Museum, London. from Moreton Bay, Queensland, Australia, a station at 4-6 fathoms    Taxon Profile Images are shown with permission and thanks to Michael A. Kaminski, the Natural History Museum London (copyright-holder) and Grzybowski Foundation. The images are made by Andrew S. Henderson with the NHM Palaeontology imaging system. Holotype specimen of Discobotellina biperforata Collins, 1958, W.J. Parr collection at the NHM, Moreton Bay, Queensland, 4-6 fathoms, 1958.11.7.810, Scale bar = 6.34 mm
	Thuramminopsis canaliculata 1     Syntypes of Thuramminopsis canaliculata Taxon Profile: in the Collections of the Natural History Museum, London. labeled as from "Zone of A. transversarius, Upper Jurassic, Canton Aargau, Switzerland, ex Haeusler Coll." Images are shown with permission and thanks to Michael A. Kaminski the Natural History Museum London (copyright-holder) and Grzybowski Foundation. The images are made by Andrew S. Henderson with the NHM Palaeontology imaging system. Syntype specimens of Thuramminopsis canaliculata Haeusler, 1883, from Brady collection (ex Haeusler Collection). 6. ZF 5197, Scale bar = 125 µm; 7. ZF 5198, Scale bar = 125 µm

 

Thanks to Michael Hesemann and the foraminifera.eu project for these wonderful images.