The Marsh Award for Palaeontology was awarded to Dr William Blows in recognition of his huge contribution to the field of palaeontology.
Continue reading “Palaeontology prize goes to Museum volunteer”
Palaeontology prize goes to Museum volunteer
Beamtime at the Advanced Light Source | COG3 Consortium
In November, Laura Newsome, a Research Associate, and Sul Mulroy, a PhD student at the University of Manchester Geomicrobiology group, travelled to California for beamtime at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Laura and Sul travelled to analyse samples generated from their work on the COG3 project. Sul reports from the visit.
Continue reading “Beamtime at the Advanced Light Source | COG3 Consortium”
What do scientists do at conferences? | Curator of Micropalaeontology
The micropalaeontology team attended the annual conference of The Micropalaeontological Society in Lille last week. My wife thinks that conferences are just an excuse for drinking, but I keep telling her that this is only partly true.
Read on to find out what we were doing in Lille, besides drinking Belgian beer of course! Continue reading “What do scientists do at conferences? | Curator of Micropalaeontology”
COG3 team presenting at Science Uncovered | COG3 Consortium
On Friday 30 September, scientists from across the Museum gathered to take part in Science Uncovered 2016, part of European Researchers’ Night.
The theme for this year’s event was ‘Hidden Worlds’, which gave us the perfect opportunity to share the work we have been doing as part of the CoG3 project with members of the public. COG3 project member Rachel Norman reports from the event.
Continue reading “COG3 team presenting at Science Uncovered | COG3 Consortium”
Studying cobalt mineralisation of the Nkamouna deposit at Diamond Light Source | CoG3 Consortium
Dr Paul F. Schofield is leading the part of the CoG3 project that focuses on describing and characterising new ore types, with an aim of developing new ways of extracting cobalt (Co). He reports back on a visit to Diamond Light Source.
In early September the Museum CoG3 team met with Prof Fred Mosselmans, a fellow member of the CoG3 consortium from Diamond Light Source. The team hoped to use Diamond’s facilities to study how cobalt is incorporated into the minerals of the Nkamouna cobalt-nickel laterite deposit in Cameroon.
The Diamond Light Source facility provides very intense, high-brightness beams of X-rays that are focused to produce powerful microscopes. Not only do these microscopes allow us to image the distribution of cobalt in natural materials with nanometre scale resolution, but they also enable us to measure how the cobalt atoms are actually bound into the atomic structure of their hosting minerals.
What do fjords, climate change and our microfossil library have in common? | Curator of Micropalaeontology
Earlier this month one of our long term visitors Prof John Murray published a paper with Elisabeth Alve outlining the distribution of Foraminifera in NW European Fjords. The main purpose was to provide a baseline for assessing man’s impact on the environment.
Read on to hear how Prof Murray used our microfossil library and collections to support their observations and investigate other factors that could control the distribution of these important environmental indicators.
Field trip to Zambia | CoG3 Consortium
The Central African copper belt is one of the world’s most important copper producing districts, with dozens of deposits spanning a 400km length through the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Zambia. Of these copper deposits, a select few contain significant quantities of cobalt, which is produced as a by-product of the ore refining process.
In June 2016 a field trip was undertaken to Zambia in order to examine cobalt-rich ore from the copper belt. Dr Alex Webber, Research Fellow at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton and member of the COG3 Consortium reports from the field trip.
Sample collection from the Nkamouna Deposit in Cameroon | CoG3 Consortium
CoG3 project member and University of Manchester PhD student Sulaiman Mulroy reports back on a recent fieldwork trip to Cameroon in West Africa.
In June 2016 I travelled to Cameroon to collect samples from the Nkamouna laterite, one of a number of lateritic ore deposits formed on top of lenticular serpentinite rocks, which cover around 240km2 in the East of Cameroon.
In total the region hosts seven lateritic ore bodies, covering ~1250km2, though only two have been subjected to rigorous exploration: Nkamouna has proven and probable reserves of 54Mt at grades of 0.25% Co and 1.7% Ni, and further north, at Mada, 150Mt of inferred resources of similar grade are believed to be hosted in the laterite.
Continue reading “Sample collection from the Nkamouna Deposit in Cameroon | CoG3 Consortium”
Museum type specimens play a key role for future climate studies | Curator of Micropalaeontology
Elphidium williamsoni Haynes, 1973 is a foraminiferal species that has been used extensively in relative sea level and climate change studies, as it is characteristic of intertidal zones. Identifying this and other species of Elphidium has proven difficult because key morphological characteristics show a wide range of variation causing widespread confusion in determinations.
A study led by University of St Andrews PhD student Angela Roberts and recently published in the Journal PloSOne, has gone a long way to clearly define this important foraminiferal species. The study is based on measurements from Museum type specimens as well as genetic studies on contemporary material collected from the same location as the type specimens.
Annual Science Advisory Board meeting | CoG3 Consortium
Dr Paul Schofield gives an account of the CoG3 project’s annual Science Advisory Board meeting, held on the 6 and 7 June 2016 at the Bangor Acidophile Research Team (BART) centre, Bangor University.
The overall purpose of our Science Advisory Board is to assess and advise upon the strategic direction of the team’s project, CoG3: Geology, Geochemistry and Geomicrobiology of Cobalt. It also ensures that all components of the project stay focused on their objectives and remain sufficiently integrated so that the entire project can deliver the desired impact.
The meeting was hosted by Barrie Johnson and Sarah Smith of Bangor University. Continue reading “Annual Science Advisory Board meeting | CoG3 Consortium”