A Note from Michael

The foraminifera.eu project has seen a disruptive

year 2018 and new kinds of activities are in the

pipeline for 2019. About 2.200 old datasets and im-

ages were deleted as they did not meet quality stan-

dards. We added 2.100 new datasets so that the

amount of entries remained almost the same. As of

2018 the catalogue contains 13.400 entries and

15.000 shall be reached by the end of 2019.

Users want to see a rising coverage on genera and

species. We added 621 genera to the total of 922.

Now the catalogue contains 1.543 genera, an esti-

mated share of 43,5% of all described genera. In

2019 we want to raise this percentage further. While

feeding the database remains an important activity

other activities such as fieldwork, semi-

professional scientific work and outreach has got-

ten more importance.

In 2018 my interest grew in scientific studies and

work. I became a voluntary worker at Senckenberg

am Meer in the team of Prof. André Freiwald. I

also became co-author of a book about the Eocene

glacial erratic Heiligenhafener Kieselgestein (see

my images to the left). In both cases I was asked,

accepted the offer and thus decided to commit

more time to such work. I think, that the Foraminif-

era.eu project will benefit from these new insights

into scientific work and opportunities to obtain interesting samples.

Major contributions of images were made by team-member Dieter Ketelsen and local co-

worker Cai-Uso Wohler from sandphoto.de, both avocational scientists. The professionals

Dr. M. Dan Georgescu, University of Calgary and Dr. Anna Waskowska, AGH Krakow

each contributed hundreds of images. Klaus Breitenbach helped with the extraction and

integration of drawings from scientific publications. Team-member Stefan Raveling pro-

vided a range of imaged and picked specimens, which he extracted from borehole mate-

rial he has access to. Several more contributions were

made and are described on pages 6 and 7. Outreach has

been extended by a bi-annual workshop on Foraminifera

offered in cooperation with the Naturschutzbund Ham-

burg. Field trips around Lagos in Portugal, Fife in Scot-

land, Amrum, Heiligenhafen and Sternberg in Germany

and Patricks Point in Northern California either yielded

foraminifera or none :).

Thank you all !

Michael Hesemann

Content:

1 A Note from Michael

Working Groups:

2 Catalogue of Portuguese Forams

3 Upper Cretaceous Forams

4 Projects with professionals

5 Activities with avocational

scientists

6,7 Contributions from avocational

and professional scientists

8 Mission and Services

9 Outreach

10 Announcements

Vaginulinopsis decoratus (Reuss, 1855)

Eocene / Heiligenhafener Kieselgestein, Germany

Foraminifera.eu Project

Newsletter 2019

sent to 629 subscribers

2: Working Groups

Catalogue of Portuguese Foraminifera

In 2019 the working group on Portuguese foraminifera will terminate its fieldwork and activities in Portu-gal. It is planned to work on British foraminifera in 2020. The enlargement of the catalogue will continue but substantially slow down. So far the catalogue contains 762 entries of Jurassic, Cretaceous, Miocene and recent foraminifera. It comprises 193 genera and 302 species. Find more at www.foraminifera.eu/portabout.html

Fieldwork In May 2018 Brian Ottway and I did our annual fieldwork at land and on sea organized by Brian. One day Derek Parish took us on his yacht A Vontade into the waters around Lagos. Brian had constructed a bot-tom sampler, which worked perfectly to obtain bottom samples from up to 38m depth. A video is on you-tube at https://youtu.be/_3e9dvl7J2E

Images The bottom-samples contain rich foraminiferal faunas, which I only partially photographed so far:

Elphidium sp. Globorotalia ruber Spiroloculina sp.

Your contribution and cowork is welcome To enlarge the catalogue we are grateful for any kind of contributions ranging from

samples, images, drawings to literature and hints on sites.

www.foraminifera.eu/apf.html

Quinqueloculina agglutinans Fissurina orbignyana Vaginulina elegans

3: Working Groups

Working Group Upper Cretaceous Foraminifera

The Working Group consists of avocational scientists from Hamburg and Oldenburg in Germany and was founded in 2011. We love to sample in the field and extract, photograph and identify the foraminifera. The numerous outcrops of Upper Cretaceous strata in Northern Germany gave us a good starting point. Our ef-forts have extended to other regions and we are very grateful for the many contributions of SEM-images by professionals. The main outcome is a catalogue with numerous illustrations, easily accessible to amateurs and professionals through our user friendly interface. The main outcome for us is, that we have built up expertise in processing of material and in identification. A publication on finds in glacial erratics from the Baltic coast was made in 2017. Find more about the working group at www.foraminifera.eu/wguc.html

In 2018 about 380 datasets of Upper Cretaceous Foraminifera were added. About 400 datasets that were not reviewed by professional scientists were deleted. To date 2414 datasets and images are in the catalo-gue, of which 1993 are contributed and identified by scientists. It comprises 329 genera and 811 species.

Contributions A major contribution is being made by Dr. M. Dan Georgescu from the University of Calgary, Canada. In 2018 he contributed hundreds of images from his publications and will continue in 2019. Some of his clas-sifications of planktonic foraminifera are in conflict with those of Mikrotax. Nonetheless we decided to integrate them as they are published following his approach of an evolutionary classification. Examples are the SEM-images of Eohastigerinella watersi (Cushman, 1931) seen to the left and Anaticinella aprica (Loeblich and Tappan, 1961) to the right. Find out more at:

www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=M. Dan Georgescu&aktion=suche

Peter Schumacher (Museum Helgoland) provided samples from the island of Helgoland. Dieter Ketelsen extracted, identified and photographed several fo-raminiferal specimens. To the right are three of his im-ages of a Frondicularia turgida Reuss, 1846. For 2019 it is planned to visit Helgoland and collect more mate-rial. We expect not only to find Upper Cretaceous ma-terial. Salt tectonic forces have lifted a whole set of strata to the surface at and around Helgoland.

Due to our limited resources quite a few samples are still unprocessed. Prof. Dr. Mike A. Kaminski from Micropress Europe in Krakow provided us in 2017 with a set of Upper Cretaceous forams from a well site in the Foula Subbasin in the Norwegian Sea. So far we just shot about 35 images for 25 datasets. See:

www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=Micropress Europe&aktion=suche

In the pipeline are images of Santonian to Turonian forams already extracted + picked by Stefan Raveling.

Please consider to contribute your images of Upper Cretaceous foraminifera

4: Projects with professionals

Senckenberg am Meer Wilhelmshaven Mauritanian Shelf

In 2018 I became a voluntary worker at Senckenberg am Meer in the team of Prof. André Freiwald. I worked on recent samples from the Mau-ritanian Shelf. Mainly in 2017 I made 400 images, representing 228 specimens in the material and identified them. To the left is an image of Ammodiscus incertus d'Orbigny, 1839. We counted the foraminiferal con-tent of 25 samples. In January 2019 we will discuss the interpretation of the data and how to move on with Leon Hoffmann at Senckenberg am Meer. He made the contact and provided us with the samples. See all im-ages at www.foraminifera.eu/locdebe.php?locality=Mauritanian Shelf

North Sea Dr. Hermann Neumann from the Marine Biology division of Senckenberg am Meer provided us with 12 samples from different localities in the North Sea. About 120 images were made resulting in 50 datasets of identified spe-cimens. We used the images to enlarge our collection of North Sea foramini-fera. In September I presented the foraminifera.eu project at Senckenberg am Meer in their Colloquium.

Catalogue of North Sea Foraminifera The North Sea is our “home sea” connecting Hamburg to the world. So far we had only beach and near shore samples. With the material from Sencken-berg am Meer we are now able to build a comprehensive catalogue. To the right is an image of Cassidulina carinata Silvestri, 1896 from a station between Shetland and Bergen, Nor-way. In 2019 we will start our new project “North Sea Foraminifera”. So far the catalogue contains 159 entries of 52 genera and 73 species. We estimate, that more than 200 species are living in the North Sea.

Eocene Heiligenhafener Kieselgestein

Jan Deppermann and Stefan Polkowsky asked me to become a co-author of their monograph on the Eocene glacial erratic Heiligenhafener Kiesel-gestein. It is found on the German coast of the Baltic and in gravel pits in Northern Germany. It is derived from Eocene strata, which commonly lie far below the surface. Due to salt tectonic, slabs were lifted upward and transported and re-worked by the ice during glaciation periods. Only harder parts remained as glacial erratics and were dispersed by ice and water. Jan and Stefan pro-vided me with several pieces of Heiligenhafener Kieselgestein with foram-rich layers. An outcrop of still intact slabs is nowadays found near Heiligenhafen, a German town on the Baltic Sea. Based on the foraminiferal record the out-crop and the glacial erratics can be correlated to the undisturbed strata know from drillings into the ground. The monograph will contain a foraminiferal chap-ter with 10 plates. To the left is a plate on Vaginulinopsis decoratus (Reuss, 1855). To the right is a Lenticulina with matrix. The monograph will cover the whole macrofossil content.

5: Activities with avocational scientists

Miocene to Pleistocene Foraminifera from Italy Thanks to the malacologist Helmut Krock we have a few Neogene samples from Northern Italy in our stock. They contain beautiful benthic forams. In 2018 Cai-Uso Wohler from www.sandphoto.de continued to shoot excel-lent optical images. We primarily used the book “Foraminiferi Padani” published by AGIP in 1982 to identify them. So far 200+ images of 120+ specimens have been made. For 2019 we lack new samples and will go to our samples in stock to find overlooked specimens. To the right is an image made by Cai-Uso Wohler of a Borelis melo (Fichtel and Moll, 1798) from Tortonian material found near Stazzano in the Piedmont. See more at

www.foraminifera.eu/querydb.php?country=Italy&age=Miocene&aktion=suche

Lagenids from the Gulf of Naples Klaus Breitenbach extracted many drawings and the accompanying data from Buchner, P., 1940: Die Lage-

nen des Golfes von Neapel und der marinen Ablagerungen auf Ischia. (Beiträge zur Natur-geschichte der Insel Ischia). in Nova Acta Leo-poldina. Kaiserlich-Leopoldinisch-Carolinische Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher. 9(62). Brian had the idea. So far 159 datasets are in the Foraminifera.eu Database. To the right is Favulina squamosa (Montagu, 1803) and to the left Amphicoryna scalaris (Batsch, 1791). The rest will be added in 2019. We will try to get raw material to add some of our own images.

See more at: www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=Paul%20Buchner&aktion=suche

Sampling in Fife, Scotland In June 2018 John Taylor, an experienced agate and fossil collector, invited me to his home in Fife, Scot-

land and we did several field-trips. The finds ranged from Carboniferous plant fossils, fish and ostracodes to recent foraminifera. I made a cou-ple of images of forams from Crail at the mouth of Firth of Forth. To the left is a Lobaluta loba-tula / Cibicidella variabilis and to the right a Sa-hulia conica. John is an engaged networker among mineral and fossil hunters and always brings foram-rich samples from his trips around the world. His sample of Cretaceous smears from the Baltic led to an article by us. He also brought

samples from Taiwan and New Zealand. A sample from Norfolk will be in 2019 the starting point to work on Upper Cretaceous material from the UK. We have made a rough plan for another visit in 2019. It is in-tended to visit the foram-workers in St. Andrews and meet people of the Scottish Association of Marine Sciences (SAMS) in Oban. Since 2010 I am a member and was provided with samples by Peter Lamont.

Activities with team member Stefan Raveling Stefan lives in Oldenburg, which is a 2,5 hours drive from Hamburg. We mainly exchange emails. In 2018

we started again to meet in person and our next meeting is planned for January. Stefan has access to a wide range of drill-core material from Northern Germany. We discuss his work on the material and I shoot images of provided speci-mens. He also shares his samples, which allow us to enlarge the database. In 2018 I integrated a set of his optical images on Miocene foraminifera from Groß Pampau, Germany. To the left is one of his images of Nonion commune (d'Orbigny,

1846). See more at: www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=Stefan%20Raveling&aktion=suche

6:Contributions from avocational scientists in 2018/2019

Major contributions are made by the team-members

Dieter Ketelsen, Brian Ottway and Stefan Raveling.

They range from mutual fieldwork, sample process-

ing, foram-picking and identification to discussing

the whole Foraminifera.eu Project and its focus. To

the left is an image made by Dieter of Coscino-

spira hemprichii Fuchs, 1970 from Formentera in

the Mediterranean Sea. Dieter has contributed about

500 images in total.

Cai–Uso Wohler from www.sandphoto.de has be-

come a continuous provider of excellent optical im-

ages. We still provide him with samples but he

started collecting himself and gets samples from co-

workers. We frequently discuss identifications and

meet monthly. To the right is an image of Opercu-

lina subgranulosa (d'Orbigny, 1850) from Khao Lak,

Thailand. See

www.sandphoto.de

www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=Cai-Uso Wohler&aktion=suche ——————————————————————————————————-———————–——————————

+++ Adrian Brokenshire from Dorset, UK every year sends us sam-

ples, which he obtains from his work as a malacologist. To the right is

an image of Pileolina zealandica Vella, 1957 from his sample Hicks

Bay, New Zealand. In 2019 we will bring online forams found in his

samples from Carrick Roads, Cornwall, UK. Most of his samples are

used in our microfossil collectors group for educational purposes and

fun. +++ At the Hamburg Mineral Fair in 2017 malacologist Helmut

Krock gave us samples from Podere Sant Uliviere, Tuscany. This year

we missed his visit at our booth and learned that he had passed away in

2018. +++ Michael Dietrich a sand collector sent us images of Fiji fo-

rams and a sample from the Solomon Islands. +++ For the local group

AG Mikropaläontologie im Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein Ham-

burg we organised a field trip to

the gravel pit of Kobrow in Northeastern Germany. Family Thiede

(professional fossil collectors) introduced us to the gravel pit and hel-

ped us to find the Oligocene Sternberger Gestein. They showed us their

well presented collection comprising a wide range of finds from

Kobrow and Consrade. In March 2019 Volker Ziegler will give an

overview about our finds at the monthly meeting of the AG Mikropalä-

ontologie. An image of Nodosaria bacilla minor Hantken, 1875 found

in Sternberger Gestein is seen to

the right. Foto: Michael Hese-

mann +++ Stefan Raveling sent

specimens from the -Turonian

from a borehole at Sauhagen, -

Maastrichtian from the Lüneburg Kreideberg, - Miocene from bore-

holes and the pit of Winterswijk, - recent dive samples from Tusca-

ny , Italy and Rabac, Croatia. To the left are images of a Virgulinella

pertusa found in Miocene clay material from Winterswijk-Miste

+++ Together with Jan Deppermann and Stefan Polkowksy I did

sampling in the Heiligenhafen Formation. Two out of ten samples

contained foraminifera. +++ Klaus Breitenbach sent us a set of

images of Oligocene foraminifera from the Mainz Basin.

7: Contributions from professional scientists in 2018/2019

As already mentioned Dr. M. Dan Georgescu from the

University of Calgary, Canada made a major contribution

of hundreds of images from his numerous publications.

They do not only comprise planktonic foraminifera from

the Upper Cretaceous but also benthonic foraminifera and

those of other times. For 2019 he has promised to contrib-

ute more images. Dan asked us in 2018 to use some of my

images for an upcoming publication. In return I asked him

for some images and I am overwhelmed by his reaction.

Some of his classifications are in conflict with the view of

Mikrotax. We think that everybody needs to know about

relevant publications and has to make up her/his own mind,

which view to follow. To the left are images of Groshenyia pentagonalis (Reichel, 1948) of Albian age

found in material from the ODP Hole 1050C. See more at

www.foraminifera.eu/collection.php?collname=M.%20Dan%20Georgescu&aktion=suche

Dr. hab. Ana Waskowska from the AGH University of Science and Technol-

ogy Faculty of General Geology and Geotourism in Krakow gave us permis-

sion to use her images. In 2018 we managed to integrate 242 of these images.

There are still more to be integrated and we will work on that in 2019. Further-

more she gave us a set of Ammodiscid like foraminifera for optical imaging in

2017. It is intended to work on that in 2019. To the right is her SEM-image of

Glomospira charoides (Jones and Parker, 1860).

+++ As mentioned Leon Hoffman from Senckenberg am Meer provided in

2018 more samples from the Mauritanian Shelf. Dr. Hermann Neumann pro-

vided 12 samples from around the North Sea. Both were used to shoot images,

enlarge the catalogue and work on the already described projects +++ Dr.

Patricia Eichler, scholar at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, California sent a set of Brazilian foraminif-

era, which were photographed but are not yet online. +++

Contributors

Thank you all for your support

8: Mission

The Foraminifera.eu-Project wants to foster the

interest in foraminifera. We love to work on raw

material and build working groups and project

teams, in which avocational and professsional

scientists work together in well defined and

scheduled projects.

An outcome is our freely accessible, illustrated

catalogue of foraminifera based on a well struc-

tured database and easy-to-use interfaces. Avo-

cational to professional scientists get a free platform where they find valuable informati-

on and may show off their results.

The Foraminifera.eu-Project is non-commercial. Our team and our contributors do not get

a financial compensation as our work is based on naturalist enthusiasm. We will use do-

nations of money or equipment only to cover costs. Find more on the team and details at

www.foraminifera.eu/about.html

Our Services

We love to work on interesting samples and have built up expertise in the processing of

raw material containing microfossils. We offer our services for free, but we only do what

we like to do. Please contact us first and explain what you want.

Example: Optical imaging of foraminifera

AG Mikropaläontologie Hamburg

monthly meetings + activities

Workshop Foraminiferen

together with the Naturschutzbund

Hamburg 8.3. and 15.11.2019

Practical work on samples

Field work

Sample processing

Picking of microfossils

Identification of foraminifera

Optical Imaging

Counting of foraminifera

Stratigraphical Analysis of profiles

Support of any kind

Talks and workshops

Bolivina alata, recent, off Panama, image: Michael Hesemann

9: Outreach

In 2018, the foraminifera.eu webpage had more than

230.000 recorded visitors, who downloaded 155 GB of

data. Power users especially from China and Indonesia

were blocked to avoid a closure of the webpage by the

provider. Accesses were made from 9840 cities in 201

countries. As seen to the left Monday and Tuesday are

the most popular days. About 40% of the accesses come

from universities, science networks and oil companies.

About 4 mails reach us on average every day from either

contributors or visitors. Our policy is to answer them rap-

idly, as a delayed answer might be worthless. A rise in accesses from all over the USA might be related to

„Connections Education“ linking to foraminifera.eu. They provide educational services to K-12 students.

On the first weekend in December was again the Min-

eral Fair in Hamburg with 20.000+ visitors. Together

with the AG Mikropaläontologie im Naturwissen-

schaftlichen Verein we had again for three days our mi-

crofossil booth offering to look at microfossil samples,

get information and take samples home. The booth was

well attended and we hope for new members. +++ Be-

sides this booth, the AG Mikropaläontologie has

monthly meetings in Hamburg +++ Together with the

Naturschutzbund Deutschland Section Hamburg we ran

two workshops on foraminifera in March and November. Due to the positive response we will offer them

again in 2019, see last page. +++ An artist from Frankfurt interviewed me on foraminifera in order to get

some background for her artwork. Her exhibition with drawings of foraminifera will be running in October

2019 in Frankfurt +++ An interview by a journalist of Mare - a German magazine - led so far to no article.

The topic would have been or will be citizen science in marine research +++ In May 2018 Brian and I gave

talks at the Lagos Science Centre (see poster to the

left). Brian presented the geological and paleon-

tological setting of the Algarve and outcome of our

and his investigations on microfossils. I presented

the Portuguese Catalogue of Foraminifera and the

foraminifera.eu project. It was a great mutual pres-

entation. +++ I gave general talks on foraminifera at

the Hamburg Mineral Fair (see image above) and

Naturschutzbund Hamburg. At Senckenberg am

Meer I presented the foraminifera.eu project. At the

annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Geschiebe-

kunde in Raben-Steinfeld and during meetings of

the AG Mikropaläontologie I gave talks on fo-

raminifera in glacial erratics. I did not attend a pro-

fessional meeting and intend to do it in 2019. +++

Different professionals asked for permission to use

some of our images which in all cases was granted.

+++ A school teacher from near Hannover asked for

continuous help in identification for his lessons,

which will be given in 2019. +++ For May 2019 we

are planning to have a booth at the local “Night of

Sciences”. +++ For Dr. Patricia Eichler I made im-

ages of foraminifera from Brazil for her booklet on

foraminifera for Brazilian students and schools. +++

I granted the Dutch “Stichting Geologische Ak-

tiviteiten” permission to use my images for their

upcoming publication on foraminifera.

10: Announcements

www.isf.tmsoc.org

AND

We recommend participation in:

Our Workshops in German:

www.foraminifera.eu/wsnabu.html