mastodon 4.6.9Researcher at the KIKAI Institute for Coral Reef Science, Japan. I study past climate, ice sheets and sea level change. #SeaLevel #Paleoclimate #IceSheets
Bluesky has been down so frequently lately, you have to wonder how long it will be until people realize that Mastodon is not so bad. ;)
How about for #FossilFriday some SEM images of Early Pleistocene foraminifera from the Shimajiri Group, Somachi Formation from Kikaijima, Japan? The third foram has some nasty spikes. I don't know enough to say whether they are from the foram's growth or diagenesis. #Geology
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 有孔虫 (ゆうこうちゅう - yuukouchuu) - foraminifera. Foraminifera are single celled organisms that secrete a carbonate shell-like "test". Foraminifera fossils are abundant in marine sediments and are used extensively in paleoclimate research.
The Chinese character 有 means "to have" and 孔 means "cavity". This relates to the original Latin derived word, where "foramen" means "hole" and "-fer" means "includes". The character 虫 can mean "bug", which is often appended to words to describe to any small creature in Japanese.
I have big plans tomorrow to extract foraminifera out of some Early Pleistocene sediments. This will be the first time I have done this, and I have no training. Wish me luck!
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 石英 (せきえい - sekiei) - quartz. From my past posts, you know that 石 means stone, while 英 means something like "glorious" (it is also used for anything related to England, i.e. 英語 - English). It was likely coined in the Edo Period (before 1850).
According to Wikipedia, during the Edo Period, the word 水晶 (water crystal) was also used as the world for quartz. This word has more of a connotation of gem quality quartz, compared with 石英. Apparently 水精 was also used as a word for quartz. The precise time 石英 became standard is not known.
At the Kikai Instutute for Coral Reef Sciences, we have a boarding school program for high school aged students to introduce science to them in a hands on matter. Can I, the modeller, teach sedimentary geology in Japanese? Yes!
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 地質 (ちしつ - chishitu) - geology. As in the geology of the outcrop, not geology the science (that is 地質学). 地 is one of the most common Chinese characters you will encounter in Japanese, which means "earth" or "ground", while 質 is "quality".
I could not find a precise etymology, but one has to assume that this is a translation of the English word "geology".
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 岩石 (がんせき - ganseki) - rock. 岩 is the Chinese character that means "boulder" while 石 means "stone". It is actually a common thing in Japanese (and I imagine Chinese) to combine two characters of similar meanings together to make a comprehensive word.
I am preparing for my Saturday lab work on these Early Pleistocene sediments for the coral boarding school class this weekend, and I managed to find a nice foraminifera! I still have no idea how to pick them out, the tweezers I have are way too big and static is a problem. I was told I should use a paintbrush to get them out, but I have no idea how to do that.
Also, I am proud that my hands were steady enough to take this photo from the microscope with my phone. It was not easy!
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 露頭 (ろとう - rotou) - outcrop. When you first learn the Chinese character "露", you generally learn the main meaning of "dew", but in Japanese it also means "uncovered". 頭 normally means "head", but in the sense here, it means "clarity". This again is probably a translation of the English word.
Šujan et al investigate the Early Pleistocene sediments in Lithuania, and conclude that the first advance of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet there happened during the Elsterian Glaciation (MIS 12). A unit that was previously interpreted as an earlier advance is now interpreted as a debris flow.
Japanese Earth science word of the day: 外肛動物 (がいこうどうぶつ - gaikou dobutu) - bryozoa. Bryozoa are tiny marine animals that superficially looks similar to corals, and produce a carbonate skeleton. They are one of the main fossils you will find in carbonate rocks during the past 400 million years.
The current term "bryozoa" is derived from Greek roots, where "bryo" means "moss" while "zoa" means "animal". The Japanese term is two words, 外肛, which means "outside anus" and 動物, which means "animal". The Japanese word is a translation of a more accurate name for bryozoa, which is "ectoprocta".
The "outside anus" refers to the fact that the anus was located just outside of the lophophore, the tentacles that surround the mouth of the bryozoa. Bryozoa is an older term that originally could also refer to entoprocta, a completely different type of animal, but was not recognized at that time.
There were apparently proposals to abandon the term bryozoa, but this was not done because it would make the literature confusing. The Japanese must have coined the term 外肛動物 after it was recognized that ectoprocta and entoprocta were different.
I wrote a blog post about Point 211, the highest place in Kikaijima! I got some pictures of the coral fossils there.
Japanese Earth Science word of the day: 石灰岩 (せっかいがん - sekkaigan) - limestone. I have already gone through how 石岩 means "rock", so the middle part 灰 is added to identify the rock. On its own 灰 means "ash", so it may refer to the fact that lime would be produced from limestone by heating.