Indo-Pacific Ancient Ecosystems Group

In order to start our connexion with Utrecht University as part of our PhD activities, we will have a meeting on next Tuesday 4 October. A general overview of the project will be presented by Willem Renema, followed by talks about the geology of the Mahakan Delta (Nathan Marshall), as well as the biodiversity of Foraminifera (Vibor Novak), Mollusca (Sonja Reich), Bryozoa (Emanuela Di Martino), and Corals (Nadia Santodomingo). In addition, Viola Warter will show some preliminary results about the geochemistry.

Viola joined the project at the beginning of this month, and she will cover the geochemistry component at the Royal Holloway University. She is visiting today the Natural History Museum, and I took advantage to take a picture with one of our nice Coral samples!

Today was a rainy day in Bontang, the base camp. Luckily, we
had decided to stay at the hotel to organize the samples and fill out the spreadsheets. Only one week of duties and we have already collected about
270 sample bags!! Look at the piles for yourselves... and just imagine the
amount of work we have in front. 

By Anja Roesler.

The last two
days of the carbonate team who are Vibor, Simone, Juan Carlos, Anja and Dedy
were spent on a long cliff section of mainly marly and very weathered limestone.
That was not that much of a scientific pleasure, but this is also part of
fieldwork. This section was finished today at the side of an impressively huge
mudflat (pic. 1), near the “buaia buaia” what means Crocodile River.

To perform transects on the coral assemblages of the Top-reef
Stadion (TF51 & TF57).

On the 22^nd June, the group conformed by Paul,
Emanuela, Nadia, Pak Untug, and Aseb settled in Samarinda. Soon after lunch, we
went back to Batu Putih (TF76) to have a look on the corals and looking for
bryozoans. Although an active quarry, the outcrop has not changed that much
from last year. Intact colonies of platy corals were observed upside down, and this
time we tried to collect the ones we left behind from last year, but again...

After some paperwork and phone calls
coordinating the delivery (thanks to Ken Johnson and Martin Munt), around 11 am
on Friday the container arrived to the Natural History Museum full of our Indonesian
fossils. The images talk by themselves…

Making the best of our strength together
with Ken, Bill, Lil, and Emanuela, the 44 crates were unloaded and stored
outside the conservation unit of the Palaeontology Department.

The crate for the Royal Holloway was sent on
Friday afternoon. Spanish samples will be dispatched soon.