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MRC Current Activities

The Japan Full MRC has recently completed accession of the large (ca 17K samples) radiolarian slide collection of Nick Pisias for long-term management. The collection includes numerous surface sediment samples from the Pacific, a resampling of the CLIMAP LGM Pacific samples, and many downhole sets mostly from equatorial and eastern Pacific sites. This includes many piston cores, plus numerous slides from DSDP Leg 85 and ODP Legs 138 and 202. A full list is available from this website under 'downloads'. Please contact the Japan MRC for access information.

Also in Japan, a consortium of universities and other research institutions are running a 5 year funded program to promote micropaleontology research and training in Japan. The Japan MRCs (National Science Museum; Utsunomiya) are contributing to this effort.

IODP's Paleontology Coordination Group is tasked with improving management of paleontologic data within the IODP program. The MRC curators have been working together with other micropaleontology specialists and IODP data managers to formulate a program to improve the quality of micropaleontologic data entry, documentation, and data retrieval in the program. As a first step, master taxonomic name lists (TNLs) have been compiled for foraminifers, calcareous nannofossils, diatoms, and radiolarians, and a database is being created to provide community access. These TNLs will provide scientists better links to existing IODP data (linking for example known synonyms automatically during searches), and will be the base for future development of other taxonomic data products.

The MRCs are proud to be contributing to this project. Please contact the lead curator for details if you are interested.