2008 Annual General Meeting

Microfossils and Extinction
19th November, 2008, 1.15pm, J. Z. Young Lecture Theatre, University College London

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Nils Chr. Stenseth & Lee Hsiang Liow - Macroecological and macroevolutionary dynamics of marine plankton inferred through microfossils

Guy Harrington - Paratropical floral extinction in the Late Palaeocene-Early Eocene

Paul Bown - The roller-coaster ride of Paleogene coccolithophore evolution: from mass extinction to peak diversity and back!

Helen Coxall - Forams and extinction: forces and feedbacks in marine ecosystems

Alan Lord & Ian Boomer - The extinction of the Metacopina – a major event in ostracod history

Sabrina Renaud & Catherine Girard - Conodont strategies facing environmental perturbations leading to mass extinction

Presentation of TMS Brady Medal to Professor Katharina von Salis. Presented by Professor Michal Kucera.

Presentation of Charles Downie Award 2008 to Dr Kirsty M. Edgar

Following the lectures, members of the Society were invited to a wine reception in the North Cloister, generously sponsored by PetroStrat Ltd 

2007 Annual General Meeting

Micropalaeontological Heroes

7th November, 2007, 1pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, University College London

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Held in association with the Geological Society, the meeting focused on ‘Micropalaeontological Heroes’ – worthies who helped found the discipline of micropalaeontology, the scientific contributions that they made and the relevance of their discoveries for current research. The 2007 AGM was TMS's contributed to the bicentennial celebrations of the Geological Society.

• Prof. Simon J. Knell - The contentious vertebrate: Christian Pander and the conodont in the nineteenth century.
• Prof. John Marshall - Arthur Raistrick, Dalesman of the Millennium and palynologist
• Dr Jeremy Young - The slow discovery of coccolithophores, from Ehrenberg to Lohmann via SorbyWallich and Huxley - heroes and anti-heroes?
• Dr David J. Horne - Ostracods, evolution and religion: George Stewardson Brady (1832-1921) and his scientific collaborators
• Dr Robert Wynn Jones - Henry Bowman Brady, Hero of Foraminiferology: The Man, the Scientist and the Scientific Legacy

Inaugural presentation of TMS Brady Medal to Professor John Murray. Presented by Professor David Siveter with Mr Anthony Stones.

Presentation of Charles Downie Award 2007 to Dr Eleanor Maddison.

2006 Annual General Meeting 

Microfossils and Climate Change

Wednesday, 15th November 2006, University College, London

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The Charles Downie Award for presented to Dr Samantha Gibbs. Honorary Membership was confered on Dr John Whittaker and following the lectures, members of the Society were invited to a wine reception in the South Cloisters, sponsored by PetroStrat Ltd. We thank Shell UK Ltd for their generous support of this meeting.

2005 Annual General Meeting

16 November 2005, J. Z. Young Lecture Theatre, University College, London

This year (2005) the AGM included invited speakers from each of the specialist groups and a lecture by the recipient of the Charles Downie Award.

• Charles Wellman (Sheffield): Dispersed spores as evidence for the origin and early evolution of land plant
• David Siveter (Leicester): The microfossils and other biota of the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte
• Ivan Sansom (Birmingham): Fishing in the Ordovician - microvertebrates and macroevolution
• Haydon Bailey and Liam Gallagher (Network Stratigraphic Consulting): Coccoliths and other microfossils in forensic palaeontology
• Rainer Gersonde (AWI, Bremerhaven): Diatoms as indicators of Pleistocene development of the Southern Ocean
• Kate Darling (Edinburgh): Genetics of planktonic foraminifera
• Daniela Schmidt (Bristol): Abiotic Forcing of Plankton Evolution in the Cenozoic (Charles Downie Award)

Honorary Membership was confered on Prof John Murray and following the lectures, members of the Society were invited to a wine reception in the South Cloisters, generously sponsored by PetroStrat Ltd.

2004 Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting was held on 17th November at University College London.

Following Society business, two talks were presented.

Ancient Glacier Bodies, the Case of Oetzi, the Tyrolean Iceman: Clues from Microscopic Plant and Animal Remains - Dr Jim Dickson Institute of Biomedical & Life Sciences, Univ. of Glasgow

The 5,300 year old Tyrolean Iceman is the best preserved, oldest human body ever found. Scientifically, he is much more fun than Tutankamun. By palynology and complimentary techniques, the challenge is to work out his lifestyle in as great detail as possible and in particular to reconstruct his last days and hours.

Pteropods; What the Heck are They? - Mr Arie Janssen National Museum of Natural History, Leiden

Pteropods, nowadays more correctly indicated as Gastropoda, Thesosomata, are holoplanktonic molluscs. They are known from marine deposits since the Late Palaeocene and still occur in the actual fauna. A brief account of systematics and morphology will be given. Their potential application in biostratigraphy will be demonstrated, with results from the Mediterranean and the North Sea Basin. Some practical cases using vertical distribution and evolution will be explained as examples of their possibilities, next to well-known other holoplanktonic organisms like dinoflagellates, foraminifera and calcareous nannoplankton.

2003 Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting was held on 26th November at University College London.

Following Society business, two talks were presented.

The use of reworked palynomorphs in the provenance analysis of the Crag Group (Pleistocene) and the pre-Devensian glacial deposits of East Anglia

J.B. Riding1, J. Rose2, R.J.O. Hamblin1, B.S.P. Moorlock1, S.J. Booth1, J.R. Lee2 and S. Pawley2
1British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
2Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey

Allochthonous palynomorphs have proved extremely useful in the provenance analysis of the Crag Group and the overlying pre-Devensian glacial succession in East Anglia, southeast England. The Crag Group is dominantly fluvial and palynomorph-bearing sedimentary clasts picked up inland to the north and west, especially where the rivers were of high erosive force, can help model the paths of these major drainage elements. Likewise, the palynological content of Till sheets can also provide valuable evidence of provenance. In both the Crag Group and the Till succession, Carboniferous and Jurassic palynomorphs may be especially common, with lesser proportions of Cretaceous and Palaeogene elements. Palynomorphs of Silurian to Quaternary age have been observed.

Both derived palynofloras and clast lithologies from river and shallow marine sediments have been used to correlate pre-Anglian fluvial and coastal deposits in eastern England. The results are used to provide a lithostratigraphical framework for the Early and early Middle Pleistocene sediments, and to derive sedimentary models that can be linked to the tectonic and climatic processes that determined the behaviour of the geological systems. Three geological systems are recognised. i) The river Thames, which drained an area from Wales through Midland England to the Thames basin and southern East Anglia and reached the southern North Sea delta in the region of southern East Anglia. ii) The Bytham river which drained midland England and the southern Pennines and reached the southern North Sea delta in the region of north central East Anglia. iii) The Ancaster river which drained the southern Pennines and received sediment from northeast England. This river reached the sea in, and north of, northern East Anglia and contributed to some of the Cromer Forest-Bed. Each of these rivers contributed to the shallow marine sediments that formed around the eastern margin of the southern North Sea delta/estuary and are known as the Red, Norwich, and Wroxham Crag formations.

Similarly, the study of allochthonous palynomorphs can be effectively applied to the provenance of the pre-Devensian glacial deposits of Norfolk. Traditionally these deposits have been divided into a Lowestoft Formation, overlying a North Sea Drift Formation, the latter including three or four tills. All were considered to be Anglian, Oxygen Isotope Stage (OIS) 12. However, detailed mapping has demonstrated that the Lowestoft Till equates to the Walcott Till or Second Cromer Till, the second of the North Sea Drift tills. The deposits underlying the Lowestoft Till are now termed the Happisburgh Formation and were derived from northern Britain and the North Sea. The Lowestoft Formation is overlain by the Bacton Green or Third Cromer Till, for which derivation from northern Britain and the North Sea is also proposed; no Scandinavian erratics have been found in this till. The Bacton Green Till is overlain by the Overstrand Formation. This includes both sandur deposits (Briton's Lane Member) and till (Stody Member), both of which are dominated by coarse, rounded flints. Unlike the earlier formations, the Overstrand Formation reveals constructional geomorphology and contains Scandinavian erratics, and an OIS 6 age is proposed for this glaciation, corresponding to the major glaciation in the Netherlands.

Micropalaeontology in the service of archaeology: advances in Quaternary biostratigraphy and palaeoenvironmental analysis
using foraminifera and ostracods

J.E. Whittaker1, Dave Horne2 & Bob Wynn Jones3
1Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London
2Department of Geography, Queen Mary College, University of London
3BP Exploration, Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlessex

It all started with Boxgrove! Traditionally, palynology had been the foremost tool in the micropalaeontological interpretation of the Quaternary. At the world-famous Boxgrove archaeological site (of Cromerian age), West Sussex, however, poor preservation of palynomorphs resulted in a need to consider other options; consequently I was asked, about ten years ago, to assess the potential of ostracods and foraminifera as palaeoenvironmental proxies and dating tools at Boxgrove. Results were encouraging and led to further requests to analyse calcareous microfossils from other archaeological sites, including the Aldingbourne, Brighton-Norton, and Selsey raised beaches in Sussex, as well as further afield. Soon, however, it was realised that taxonomic nomenclature in both microfossil groups needed substantial revision if they were to be used effectively to circumvent the loss of valuable climatic, environmental and biostratigraphic information due to misidentifications. Case histories from several UK sites are presented here and provide examples of successes resulting from exciting new discoveries, as well as some cautionary tales. A case is made for a renewed effort to establish a standard taxonomic database of Quaternary ostracods and foraminifera that extends well beyond the boundaries of NW Europe. The need for a harmonisation of biological and palaeontological classifications, particularly of freshwater ostracods, is also highlighted.

2002 Annual General Meeting

BRITISH MICROPALAEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY - ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
The Annual General Meeting was held on 20th November at University College London.

Following Society business, two talks were presented.

ICS on Stage 

Felix M.Gradstein
Chairman of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS)
Geological Museum, University of Oslo, Norway

The most important issue presently on the agenda of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) is the completion of the definition of stages scheduled for the year 2008; the author will outline the concept in its historical and its actual context. Special challenges exist with the definition of Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician and Quaternary stratigraphic units.

A newly created Stratigraphic Information System (SIS) is making important stratigraphic informationy easily available world-wide and also plans to offer assistance with teaching of stratigraphy in the earth-science curriculum of universities and high-schools. The URL stratigraphy.org is the official website of  ICS and its SIS. Geoscientists can now quickly find key stratigraphic information like stage boundary stratotypes, the International Stratigraphic Guide, the Standard Stratigraphic Chart with its colour coding scheme(s) and the standard Geological Time Scale.

ICS is also in the process of creating an electronic science journal called E-Strata.

In 2004 a new version will be published of the Standard Geological Time Scale with many stage boundaries dated significantly different from before, particularly in Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, Lower Jurassic, Lower Cretaceous and Paleocene.

ICS is in the steering committee of the CHRONOS Network for Earth System History that develops Integrated Databases, Portals and Toolkits linked to the standard time scale. CHRONOS will  deliver a dynamic, interactive and refined framework for Earth System History based upon a network of comprehensive databases spanning the evolution and diversity of life, climate change, geochemical cycles, core-to-crust processes and other aspects of the Earth system.  Research and outreach portals equipped with powerful analytical and visualization tools will enable exploration and understanding of our evolving planet. The industry supported Network of Offshore Records in Geology and Stratigraphy (NORGES) developed and operated by the Geology Museum of Oslo University will link to and benefit from CHRONOS.

Freshwater diatoms as monitors of environmental change in the tropical Americas

Prof. Sarah Metcalfe  (Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, UK)

The impact on the environment of both climatic change and human activities is of growing concern. It is clear that tropical areas are particularly vulnerable to both, but usually lack the long term monitoring data which can provide some form of baseline assessment of natural variability and sensitivity to disturbance. Freshwater diatoms can provide alternative archives of change over a variety of timescales. Results from Mexico and Belize are used to illustrate applications of diatoms to issues of climate change and human disturbance over timescales from millennia to sub-decadal. Increasingly, such reconstructions exploit not only the diatom assemblages per se, but the isotopic signatures preserved in the diatom frustules. Whilst offering many advantages for reconstructing environmental change there are conditions which hamper diatom studies and some of these are also discussed in the Central American context.

2001 Annual General Meeting

BRITISH MICROPALAEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY - ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
The Annual General Meeting was held on 21st November at University College London.

Following Society business, two talks were presented.

Microvertebrates and macroevolution – unravelling the origin and early history of the vertebrate clade
Dr Paul Smith, Dr Philip Donoghue and Dr Ivan Sansom (School of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham)

The study of Early Palaeozoic microvertebrate faunas has, in the last decade, had a major impact on the understanding of vertebrate palaeobiology. A review of pre-Silurian vertebrates carried out as recently as 1991 concluded that only five species could confidently be included in the clade. Since then, a number of key discoveries have been made, many of them reliant on micropalaeontological methodologies. For example, the first armoured fish are now known to be present in the Late Cambrian, and the biodiversity of Ordovician vertebrates is far higher than previously suspected, even at high taxonomic levels. One particularly important change has been the increasing recognition that conodonts are vertebrates, which has both changed the temporal perspective of vertebrate phylogeny and increased the known generic and specific diversity by two orders of magnitude. Together, these developments demonstrate the importance of integrating micropalaeontological and traditional, vertebrate macrofossil, datasets since neither picture is complete in itself. The new discoveries have a significant part to play in elucidating the phylogeny of the group and in testing evolutionary scenarios, in assessing the completeness of the fossil record of early vertebrates, and in the determination of biogeographic and large-scale ecological patterns and processes.

Coccolithophore species - results from CODENET (Coccolithophorid Evolutionary Biodiversity and Ecology Network)
Dr Jeremy Young (Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD)

In 1997 we (VU Amsterdam, ICM-Barcelona, U. Bremen, AWI-Bremerhaven, U. Caen,  U. Lisbon, Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, U. Oviedo,  ETH-Zurich) were successful in obtaining EU funding for a Training and Mobility of Researchers network project, CODENET, to train young scientists in interdisciplinary research and carry out basic research into coccolithophorid ecology, microevolution and phylogeny. The project was focused on six key species and included culture isolation; studies of cytology, morphogenesis, life-cycles and pigments; calibration of oxygen isotope, Sr/Ca, and alkenone palaeoproxies; plus taxonomic synthesis and molecular genetic study. This work was planned to: "(1) Probe high-level diversity in key aspects of coccolithophorid biology; (2) build a representative suite of case studies in species-level diversity and microevolutionary processes and (3) advance our understanding of the ecology of extant coccolithophorids and palaeoceanographic information recovery from fossil coccoliths."

The project is now nearing its end after some three and a half years of gratifyingly productive research (it formally ends on 30th Sept 2001). This talk will briefly overview the project as a whole and discuss the potential this type of research for micropalaeontology in general. I will then focus on one topic which brings together a range of interesting research - microevolution and species concepts.

As with most microfossil groups there has been a strong tradition in coccolith studies of detailed morphometric study of key taxa and lineages, both to understand evolutionary process and to refine biostratigraphy. There has, however, remained considerable uncertainty about the correlation between such morphospecies (often based on rather arbitrary size definitions) and biological species. Within the CODENET project we were able to combine detailed morphometric study of key species in the geological record, in sediment traps, in plankton samples and in laboratory cultures. In parallel with this we used the laboratory cultures to investigate both ecophenotypic variation in selected strains and molecular genetic differentiation between multiple strains. Finally life-cycle studies have provided an unexpected source of additional information, from comparison of coccolith differentiation in the haploid and diploid phases.  The work is at varying stages in the six taxa being studied but a rather consistent pattern is emerging. It appears that the individual species consist of a small set of closely-related sub-species/genotypes with distinct morphologies and discrete ecological preferences; but with overlapping geographical ranges and each with essentially global distributions.  This pattern does not fit easily with either allopatric or sympatric models of microevolution, but does correlate well with biostratigraphic observations of very low diachronism and endemism in calcareous nannofossils.

TMS Sponsored Meetings 2002
Joint Meeting of AASP-TMS-NAMS - Recent Developments in Applied Biostratigraphy.
11th - 13th September, 2002. University College London.

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