Research Training Program

Diana Chapa
University of Texas at Brownsville
Brownsville, TX

Brian T. Huber, Ph.D.
Supervising Scientist
Department of Paleobiology

"I have discovered a tremendous beauty hidden within one of nature’s smallest organisms."

Foraminifera are tiny single-celled organisms that construct a shell (also called a test). They inhabit a wide range of marine environments. After death, their tests can be found in abundance in sediment samples. There are two major groups into which foraminifera can be divided: benthic, which can be found on the ocean floor, and planktic, which can be found in the upper 300ft. of the ocean. Foraminifera shells occur in a wide variety of shapes and are about 0.1mm to 1mm in size. These organisms have been found from the earliest Cambrian. Benthic foraminifera date as far back as 500 million years. Planktic foraminifera evolved about 190 million years ago. Because of their sensitivity to changes in the environment and their wide distribution, they have proven to be valuable indicators of past climate change. The project involved species of planktic foraminifera that date as far back as the Cretaceous period; early Albian (100 million years) through late Maastrichtian (65 million years). The samples used for this project were collected off the coast of North Florida at Blake Nose, where diversity is high in this tropical location. The sediments in which these specimens were found were noted to contain very low levels of oxygen, which affected these organisms. The goal of this project was to make a digital catalog. Images obtained from a Scanning Electron Microscope were edited and sharpened to provide a quality suitable for the production of a World Wide Web based catalog. The production of this catalog will prove useful to research specialists for rapid species identification; the catalog will also contain links to information on their biostratigraphy, biogeographic distributions and phylogenetic relationships.