Indo-Pacific Ancient Ecosystems Group

I am happy to announce that my poster "Molluscs from meadows - An Early Miocene seagrass mollusc association from Java, Indonesia" won the student poster contest at the "82. Jahrestagung der Paläontologischen Gesellschaft" (82nd annual meeting of the German palaeontological society) in Vienna with more than 25% of the votes.

Today our samples which had been collected in Bontang, Bengalon and
Sangkuliran started their journey to Balikpapan where they will go on board
in direction of Europe. A total of 74 wooden and plastic boxes filled up with fossils
and sediment samples were loaded on a truck. Each box has an average weight
of 50 kg which makes a total of about 3.7t! And it’s still not all! The hard work
of moving all the material was greatly performed by Ken, Willem, Aries, Asep, two
of our drivers and last but not least the local construction workers. They all did an

If you want to study the development of biodiversity from the fossil record
you must be sure you do so within environments. It makes no sense to compare
diversity in a fifteen year old mangrove environment with diversity in a
five million year old coral reef. Characterising environments is therefore
one of the goals of the current expedition. We do so by combining
sedimentological and palaeontological data we retrieve from the layers.

Especially for the Middle and Late Miocene we have been able to get an idea

Sonja works on Miocene mollusk faunas from amongst others seagrasses. But
how to determine that it is actually a seagrass fauna? One way is to find
seagrass remains associated with the faunas, which we probably did in two
occasions. The seagrass leaves must still be checked by a palaeobotanist
though. However, in one of the sites where we collected purported seagrass
leaves, also a different leaf showed up. One that does resemble mangrove
leaves strongly, an identification that also will have to be confirmed by a

Dear Collueges,

the date for our pre-fieldwork meeting at Naturalis in Leiden is fixed now.

It will start at 12 am on the 12th of May and finish on the 13th of May after lunch.

We will keep you informed about the planning progress (program, accomodation etc.).

Looking forward to see you in Leiden!

Sonja and Vibor