fossil New Zealand diatoms (+ other bits)

[Charles Krebs]

Starting to play around with some fossil diatoms from New Zealand. Right now just experimenting a little with the Zrax mountant.

My samples and the Zrax come from Prof Bill Dailey. He deserves great appreciation for making some wonderful samples available, and for his high RI mountant. You can actually see some pictures of the exact location these were collected at his site here:
http://micrap.selfip.com:81/oamaru/index.htm . These are from the Forrester's Hill location, and I have only had a brief single peek at the sample so far.

(The odd background in the first two images is actually the result of a mounting "flaw" in one of my test mounts.)

[discomorphella]

Hi Charlie--

Awesome shots. You may be interested to know that Cargille makes a series of solid mountants that have varying RI's. They can be used with heat or solvents, and you can get them in 1 oz. sticks. We use them all the time in lab, and it turns out they make a very high RI mountant (Meltmount™ 1.704, It has a refractive index (nD @25°C) of 1.704 and an Abbe V dispersion of 24, similar to Naphrax). I've got a stick and will try some cleaned out diatoms (once I concentrate down some to clean out). I've haven't tried the high RI version yet, but the 1.539 works well.

Regards,

David

[Craig Gerard]

Charlie,

The clarity in these images is astonishing!

Also enjoyed the link to Prof. Bill Dailey's website. It is good to see location shots.

Looking forward to seeing more of the samples.

http://micrap.selfip.com:81/zrax.pdf (Zrax Diatom Mountant)


Craig