Flatonia Texas Eocene Diatomite thread

[Michael K.]

Hello everyone,

here is a pictrue from a very "spiky" Triceratium var.  I found it from K7.



Michael

[Michael K.]

Hello,

I found these two balloons in a dried K7 dusting. They are hollow inside and have a tubular end.

Regards,
Michael

[Michael K.]

Hello,

Here I have an almost complete shell of the small discus  with its five segments. First, I stacked only the upper part, then the entire shell, and converted everything into an anaglyph image.

It's only really interesting in the 3D view, as you can see down through the opening.

Regards,
Michael


View from Top



View complete

[anne]

Hello diatom friends,
I have done some strew slides of the small fraction of R1 today.
Just to give a kind of impression how this could look like.
best
anne

[bill2penn]

A few forms from a sample K2 strew. Stacked brightfield and phase contrast images using Pl Apo 63X/1.40. I like the Auliscus which I had not seen before.
Greetings,
Bill

[Beatsy]

Hello all,

Here's one from the K7 sample. It's a particularly thick 3-dimensional species, so I included a cross-eyed stereo version too. Shot under 450nm blue light for a little better detail (compared to white light).

Cheers
Beats

[Michael K.]

Hello,

Wow, what a Picture !  I like it.


Greeting
Michael

[Beatsy]

Thanks for your comment Michael. It's much appreciated.

Cheers
Beats

[anne]

Dear Steve,
we all waited very impatiently for your images😉. And now it is like we expected, a ,,best of". Thank you for showing us these great details!
Best and happy Eastern
Anne

[Beatsy]

Thanks Anne,

I got rather sidetracked into modifying and testing a cleaning method free of restricted chemicals (no H2O2 either). This Flatonia material is convenient for testing because it breaks up easily without freeze/thaw, but suffers enough "stuck on bits" to make it good to test with. Anyway, I've just about got it right now and will document and share details of the cleaning protocol in the near future.

As my first attempts with small subsamples were less than perfect (too many random annoying stuck on bits at the end), I've cleaned another set of subsamples which came out much better. So now I can concentrate on searching strews and photographing the finds for sharing. Well, mostly...

Cheers
Beats

[Diane]

Hello all,

Here's one from the K7 sample. It's a particularly thick 3-dimensional species, so I included a cross-eyed stereo version too. Shot under 450nm blue light for a little better detail (compared to white light).

Cheers
Beats

[Beatsy]

One from K11. The two end-view shots are separate broken specimems put into the same mount. The first is a view of the inside (outer valve removed), the second view is with the outer valve in place. Note the second end is slightly tilted, which is why the shadow of the "stalk" connecting the two diatoms is off-centre.

Cheers
Beats

[bill2penn]

WOW! what an excellent image Beats!

So two diatoms are physically attached with the connector. I had thought that there were just hooked together like Pyxilla are. Very interesting. Almost like a SEM!
Bill

[Beatsy]

Ta Bill.

Yeah, the connection is confusing. The cap (outer valve) in the second end view is convex but lacks the "nipples" seen on the side view ends. I've seen these ends ranging from flat to prominently nippled. Almost as if the stalk grows from there, but then how would individuals connect?

I also have a pair of frustules directly joined face to face with stalks sticking out of each side, but nothing connected. Perhaps there's a clue there...

Curiouser and curiouser.

Cheers
Beats

[Beatsy]

Hello all,

Here's a selection of forms from K11. The image is a panorama of 4 focus-stacked tiles shot with an Oly 40x/0.9 PlanAPO objective under blue light.

It also contains the only square frustule I've found in any Flatonia samples (so far). Unfortunately it's badly damaged but I included it in case I can't find another.



This layout was ad-libbed, with each form placed as soon as it was picked out of a strew (made to check cleaning progress). You could call it a "curated strew" I guess, but that sounds a bit pretentious - so I'll just call it "pick and plonk"

Regarding cleaning: I'm struggling to get black dots out of some pennates in K11 material (see examples at the top and on the right hand side - could it be tar-based?). Maybe I'm just being too timid with the sodium carbonate boiling, but I'll try again and see if it eventually shifts this dirt without destroying frustules. Anyone else had this issue?

Cheers
Beats