Comments On The Pseudo-Microfossil Linotolypen

Hollow, black reticulate ‘microfossils’ of unknown affinity found in Ordovician to late Cretaceous sediments from North America, Europe and Australia were given the name Linotolypa by Eisenack in 1962. In 1978, he recognised that they were pseudo-microfossils consisting of asphalt, and noted that their structure resembled that of soap bubbles formed in agitated suspensions. These objects are well known as a component of the particles caught from the air by pollen and spore traps at the present day. They are correctly termed ‘cenospheres’ and are formed from coal and possibly pitch and fuel oil by incomplete combustion. If their presence were to be confirmed in Palaeozoic sediments, this would provide important new evidence for the occurrence of fire in the geological record and of the history of levels of O2 in the atmosphere.

A Marine Environmental Recorder

An inexpensive Marine Environmental Recorder is described. The instrument system is small, lightweight and of low-power consumption. It is flexible, simple to operate and economical. It can be used remotely in a moored, buoyed or towed instrument system, recording measurements continuously for up to 24 h, or intermittently for 1 min every hour, for a period of up to 60 d. It has been used extensively in the Continuous Plankton Recorder and the Undulating Oceanographic Recorder to measure temperature, depth and occasionally chlorophyll and radiant energy; as a temperature recorder, it has a resolution of 0.1 Co, an uncertainty of measurement of ±0.1 Co and a stability of calibration within ±0.1 Co over a period of several months. With optional additional sensors for pitch, roll, vibration, acceleration and water-flow, the instrument system has been used to measure the performance of underwater towed vehicles and plankton samplers. The Marine Environmental Recorder is being incorporated into an instrument system in a data buoy, for automatically monitoring the marine environment in estuaries around the British Isles.