Today we are waiting for coring to resume after changing the bit so I have the opportunity to introduce you to Girish Sharma from Kumaun University in India who is one of our paleontology group.  His particular speciality lies in the field of radiolarians. In the photograph you see him at work in the lab with his microscope as usual and you can also see as an inset in the image of one of these tiny but very beautiful creatures that live in the water column and which allow us to date the age of sedimentation. These particular creatures are made of silica not calcium carbonate like many of the microfossils we look at and these provide us with an alternative way of dating the sediment in case we are having trouble with forams or nannofossils.