The microscopic shells of planktonic foraminifera accumulate on the sea floor over millions of years, providing a rich archive for understanding the history of the oceans. We examined an extinct group that flourished between about 63 and 32 million years ago using scanning electron microscopy and show that they were covered with needle-like spines in life. This has implications for analytical methods that we use to determine past seawater temperature and acidity.

Sedimentology and micropaleontology analyses provide the dynamic processes that shaped the environmental evolution of the Thapsus coastline (Tunisia) including its lagoon and Roman harbor. The highlights are paleoenvironmental change records from the coast of Thapsus for the last 4000 years, benthic foraminiferal biota recording the dynamic coastal processes, two transgressive events being recognized, and a presented model for the paleoenvironmental evolution.

Foraminifera are sand-grain-sized marine organisms that build spiral shells. When they die, the shells sink to the sea floor where they are preserved for millions of years. We wrote a software package that automatically analyses the fossil spirals to learn about evolution of new shapes in the geological past. With this software we will be able to analyse larger datasets than we currently can, which will improve our understanding of the evolution of new species.

This study evaluates the use of automatic classification using AI on eight closely related radiolarian species of the genus Podocyrtis based on MobileNet CNN. Species belonging to Podocyrtis are useful for middle Eocene biostratigraphy. Numerous images of Podocyrtis species from the tropical Atlantic Ocean were used to train and validate the CNN. An overall accuracy of about 91 % was obtained. Additional Podocyrtis specimens from other ocean realms were used to test the predictive model.