All posts in AGM

Microfossil Palaeobiogeography and Plate Tectonics – a tribute to Alfred Wegener

The meeting was held at UCL, London on Wednesday 16th November 2011. A report of the meeting is available for download (34kb .doc) and full asbtracts of the talks presented may be found in TMS newsletter 84.

Quaternary to Recent Records of Environmental Change

The 40th Anniversary AGM of TMS

Wednesday 17th November 2010, 13.30
Pearson Lecture Theatre – University College London

A report of this meeting is available for download here (MS Word document, 40kb).

Microfossils and Evolution

18th November, 2009
Room 1.06, Roberts Engineering Building, University College London

Following the conclusion of Society business, Michal Kucera and David Lazarus introduced an excellent series of talks on the topic of Microfossils and Evolution, celebrating the Darwin Bicentenary.

The first speaker was David Bass from the Natural History Museum, London, whose title had evolved from his original one into ‘The Nth eukaryotic ‘supergroup’ and the evolutionary and ecological complexity of the Rhizaria’.  David entertained us with comparisons between the eukaryote ‘bush of life’ and ‘tree of life’ and presented some interesting new data from 454 sequencing of DNA libraries.

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Microfossils and Extinction

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

Download jpg poster (96kb)
Download programme and abstracts pdf (308kb)

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 

Micropalaeontological Heroes

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

Download jpg poster (1.5MB)
Download programme and abstracts pdf (428kb)

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.

Microfossils and Climate Change

Wednesday, 15th November 2006
University College, London

Read Abstracts.

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.

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.

The 2004 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.