Day 5 – 2025 School of Rock: Intro to Cores and Microfossils

Day 5 – 2025 School of Rock Intro to Cores and Microfossils

Notetaker: Ariel Sherman

If you woke up early enough on the R/V Marcus G. Langseth, you could have watched the sunrise at 5:56. Much of the ship was quiet except for the constant hum coming from the ship itself, moving us along in our journey.

At breakfast, there was likely something for everyone. The above is a plate described by one of the participants, Elizabeth. She said the food was amazing.

Professor Leah Joseph led the group through Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) or International Ocean Drilling Program (iODP) Introduction. Scientific Ocean Drilling is a collaborative effort when a group of scientists from multiple disciplines, technicians, and a ship’s crew work together to gather sediment and rock from deep in the ocean sea floor called cores. These cores can be thought of as ‘time machines’ through the earth’s history and can hold knowledge about millions of years in the past of earth’s geology, biology, and more. For everyone to be able to ‘read’ these cores, a specific documentation process needs to occur, and we would practice later in the day. Only a few ships in the world are able to perform deep sea drilling and it is only through a collective of specialists, research, time, effort, and funds can these crucial trips be accomplished.

Continuing from our new knowledge of cores and their importance in scientific research, Lisa D White, PhD took the stage inviting us into the world of marine micropaleontology. (I like to dissect the term into three parts: marine = water, micro = very small below a centimeter, paleontology = study of prehistoric life. If you guess a specific movie series for the last part, it was definitely close.) We learned about the major fossil protists observed in samples: calcareous nannofossils, diatoms, foraminifera (forams), and radiolarians. Biostratigraphy, study of sedimentary layers based on fossil content, provides age information while ‘core-gathering’ on the ship. The data showing distribution of microfossil species in a cored sequence is one of the important elements in determining the age of the core.

In the afternoon, there were two main activities that we accomplished in rotations. One activity was creating a Smear Slides with a sample from an actual core and our job was to find the microfossils that we had just learned about from Lisa D White, PhD. The other activity was testing our newfound knowledge of core documentation and get to touch segments of a rock core with Kaatje Kraft and Professor Leah Joseph.

In the Wet Lab, we prepped smears to observe under a compound microscope. Below, you can sneak a peek inside.

In the Dry Lab, we sorted through multiple cores and applied the documentation such as Leg #, Hole#, and more to get the core sections in the correct order.