Contents:

Marine Microfossils

What they are

Many groups of tiny organisms that live in the ocean plankton or on the ocean bottom secrete shells or other mineralised parts. These are commonly preserved as microfossils in ocean sediments. The MRCs currently hold prepared material from the sediments for four types of planktonic microfossils (all of them members of the kingdom Protista): planktonic foraminifera; calcareous nannofossils (mostly coccolithophores), radiolarians, and diatoms.

To learn more about these fossils, please follow the external links below:

• Planktonic foraminifera: www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/foram/ foramintro.html
• Calcareous nannofossils: www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ina/
• Radiolaria: www.radiolaria.org
• Diatoms: www.indiana.edu/~diatom/diatom.html