COVER: This is my digital art adaptation of van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”, but all the stars in the night sky are beautiful nannofossils. I painted the night sky on a slide image with Discoasters, Coccolithus, Reticulofenestra, Pudoemiliania, and Gephyrocapsa as the stars and Ceratolithus as the moon. The foreground is taken from the painting, and the tree is modified with Carinolithus superbus. I work on nannofossil assemblages, and whenever I look at the slide images, I am amazed by how beautiful the nannofossil world is, just like a starry night sky.
The Micropalaeontological Society is delighted to announce the winners of the 2024 Micropalaeontology Image Competition!
The overall image winner was Medhavi Srivastava from Charles University, Czechia and CEREGE, France, with a beautiful image depicting “The Starry Night”. On behalf of the Society, we would like to congratulate Medhavi on her success. Twelve additional winners were selected from the fantastic submissions, each using various microfossils and imaging techniques.
We are already looking forward to next year’s competition!
Additional winners
JANUARY: Rinu Fathima and Dawood Sheikh, National Institue of Oceanography, India
Our image is of benthic foraminifera Miliolids (outer) and Biserials (middle) arranged in a radiating pattern. The pink colour in the biserials is due to them being stained using rose bengal, indicating that these specimens were living when collected. Miliolids are epifaunal species, which means they live on the sediment surface, while biserials are infaunal, living a few centimetres beneath the sediment.
FEBRUARY: Paul Minton, UCL, UK
Orbulina universa is a planktonic foraminiferal species ranging from the mid-Miocene to today. In this image, the large outer spherical chamber of the adult is broken to reveal the juvenile’s tiny, thin, smooth form seemingly peering out from its incarceration. The SEM image was driven by wonder rather than a research goal!
MARCH: Marie Cueille
Multiverses
APRIL: Daniela Sturm, Marine Biological Association Plymouth and University of Southampton, UK
A sea of coccolithophores: Coccolithophores are single-celled algae covering their cells in intricate chalk plates. These plates eventually form part of the ocean sediment and after millions of years become structures like the white cliffs of Dover. This image of several different coccolithophore species gives an impression how they are creating these incredible formations. We can see the large tube-shaped funnels of Scyphosphaera apsteinii as well as the tiny round disks of the bloom-forming Emiliania huxleyi.
MAY: Komal Shinde, Vellore Institute of Technology, India
The species in this image is Hylinea balthica, a benthic foraminifera first identified in 1783 in a recovered sediment core from the Baltic Sea. Its compressed and planispiral test typically has 9-12 chambers in the final whorls. This species prefers shallow infaunal microhabitats and is considered an opportunistic species. These specimens are from the Bay of Bengal.
JUNE: Tamires Zardin, IttOceaneon-Unisinos, Brazil
This is a watercolour artwork of the planktonic foraminifera species Globorotalia truncatulinoides, a species that inhabits deep waters and is extremely important for Quaternary biostratigraphic and paleoceanographic studies.
JULY: Antonina Nosowska, University of Warsaw, Poland
Coccolithophores, although tiny, are intricately constructed and have a huge impact on the functioning of our planet. Therefore, it is worth teaching about them. The coccosphere model can be useful for didactic classes. Since crochet works are famous for their delicate and complex patterns, the intricate structure of coccospheres encourages us to recreate them using crochet and thread. It was with great pleasure that I crocheted the model of Emiliania huxleyi!
AUGUST: Monica Duque Castaño, Algarve Univeristy CCMAR and IPMA, Portugal
The image represents one of the geometric shapes reproduced by nature, it is not a coronavirus, nor a seed, it is the modern species of planktonic foraminifera Orbulina universa seen in scanning electron microscopy. Image taken at the Centro de Microscopia Eletrônica do Sul- Federal University of Rio Grande, Brazil.
SEPTEMBER: Francesco Pilade, Università degli studi di Torino, Italy
Close-up of a siliceous sponge spicule, Imaged via Scanning Electron Microscopy. Specimen Derived from the Late Miocene Deposits of Southern Spain.
OCTOBER: Jeet Majumder, University of Haifa, Israel, and Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India
An agglutinated benthic foraminifera with foraminiferal fragments on its surface. (Courtesy: The image was taken during my Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Anil K Gupta, at the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India)
OCTOBER: Victory Jaques and Jakub Šalplachta, Central European Institute of Technology, Czechia
Blooming microfossil: Nineteen growing stages (coloured) viewed from the bottom of an Uvigerina sp. from “birth” (centre of the image) to “adulthood” chambers. The opacity of the test was reduced to observe the chambers. We can still observe some costae from the test outline. The maximum diameter of the specimen is 595 um for a maximum length of 771 um. The X-ray computed tomography dataset was created with a Rigaku nano3DX scanner (Rigaku Corporation, Tokyo, Japan).
DECEMBER: Paval Ana Biance and Motoc Rozalia, GeoEcoMar and National Museum of Natural History, Romania
Detail of oral capsule of Gromia dianae, scale bar is 30 µm
