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Centre for Palynology Newsletter 5

December 2015

Editorial

The fifth Centre for Palynology Newsletter comes at the end of another action-packed year with all

the details provided herein. We hope you enjoy reading it and find it informative.

Tony Loy has provided some information on the winning of ‘The CIMP Trophy’ by the Centre for Palynology 5-a-side football team during the ‘North Sea ‘90’ conference that was held at the BGS in Keyworth in 1990. Despite 25 years passing since the event Tony recalls “I deemed myself too old to play and as such was given the responsibility of manager”. Unlike Sir Alex Ferguson who can recall in clinical detail every game he ever managed Tony cannot remember the exact details of the team but recollects that Duncan McLean, Awad Ibrahim, Ali Ibrahim, Hisham Bakri and Paul Sumner all played, and that the Statoil and BGS teams were defeated as the competition progressed. He also recalls that “all of the other teams had smart kits and our lot just turned up and played in T-shirts and shorts – I do remember that!”.

Grandispora from the Huergas Formation of the Cantabrian Mountains, Spain (courtesy of Alex Askew)

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Graduating Ph.D.s

Sam Slater was awarded a Ph.D. following his viva voce exam in November. Sam’s thesis was entitled “A Quantitative Analysis of the Dispersed Spore and Pollen Record From the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire, UK”. It was a NERC CASE award with Shell and jointly supervised by Charles Wellman and Iain Prince, Katrin Ruckwied, Peter Osterloff and Manuel Vieira of Shell in Houston and Aberdeen. Geoff Clayton was internal examiner and Chris Cleal (National Museum Cardiff) the external examiner. Chris was an undergraduate at Sheffield (1969-1972) before completing a Ph.D. on Coal Measures palaeobotany under the supervision of Bob Wagner. Sam has already published two papers from his thesis (details below) with a third accepted for publication in the journal Palaeontology. In March Sam will be taking up a post-doctoral position in Sweden continuing his Jurassic work with Professor Vivi Vajda.

Current Ph.D. students

Steph Wood is in the final year of her Ph.D. research project. She is working on Jurassic-Cretaceous

palynology of the Gulf of Mexico. Steph’s Ph.D. is a NERC Open CASE award with Shell and is jointly

supervised by Charles Wellman and Iain Prince, Katrin Ruckwied, Peter Osterloff and Manuel Vieira

of Shell in Houston and Aberdeen. This year Steph has spent a lot of time with Jim Riding (BGS)

consolidating her dinoflagellate taxonomy and time with Shell Aberdeen manipulating her

substantial dataset in Stratabugs.

Steph Wood

David Carpenter is in the third year of his Ph.D. research project “Charcoal, forests and Earth’s

Palaeozoic geochemical oxygen-cycle”. David is based at the University of Southampton where he is

supervised by John Marshall, but is a regular visitor to Sheffield where his co-supervisors are David

Beerling and Charles Wellman. This year David has spent a lot of time counting charcoal abundances

in his sample set spanning the Silurian-Carboniferous.

David Carpenter

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Alexander Askew is in the second year of his Ph.D. research project. He is studying the palynology of

the Middle Devonian Huergas Formation (and co-eval strata) from Asturias, the Cantabrian

Mountains and Palencia in northern Spain. Alex has undertaken two field trips and the numerous

samples he has collected yield rich assemblages of well preserved palynomorphs representing a mix

of marine and terrestrial forms. The project is a 4-year ACCE studentship funded by NERC. Alex is

supervised by Charles Wellman.

Alexander Askew

Future Ph.D. students

We are currently advertising for a Ph.D. studying the Upper Permian Zechstein sequence of north

Yorkshire. This will be based on over 16,000 m of borehole core drilled by Sirius Minerals in the

developmental stages of what will be the World’s largest polyhalite mine.

Current M.Res. students

A new departmental initiative is the Masters in Research (M.Res.) degree. The course is a full 12

months in duration and is largely project based but includes taught courses in research skills. The

first cohort of students includes two palynologists. Berkin Oktay (Turkish Petroleum) is undertaking a

project on Ordovician-Silurian palynomorphs from Turkey. Innocent Mvamba (Tanzanian Petroleum

Development Corporation) is working on Cretaceous palynology from boreholes recently drilled in

coastal Tanzania.

Berkin Oktay (left) and Innocent Mvamba (right) undertaking training in palynological processing

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Visiting Professor of Palynology Geoff Clayton

Geoff has been a frequent visitor over the year acting as an ‘unofficial supervisor’, internal examiner

and general sounding board regarding all things palynological. Geoff continues work preparing our

‘Palynology Impact Case Study’ for the next iteration of the national Research Assessment Exercise

(in approximately 4-years time). In the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) departments were

judged on research outputs (publications), research funding, esteem indicators and Impact Case

Studies. The latter were new to the system. They consist of detailed reporting of how research

within your department impacts industry. We intend to prepare such a Case Study for the next

research assessment that highlights how our palynological research is used in the hydrocarbon

exploration industry.

Geoff & Charles at the Christmas Dinner

Undergraduate teaching

This year six undergraduate students selected palaeontology for their Level 3 project topic. They

have been undertaking a palaeoecological analysis of a cuticle coal from the Ravenscar Group of the

Yorkshire Jurassic. The samples yield stunning cuticles, largely belonging to the pteridosperm plant

Pachypteris papillosa, in addition to diverse assemblages of beautifully preserved dispersed

spores/pollen.

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The undergraduate Level 3 project students studying Jurassic plant cuticles and dispersed spore/pollen assemblages

We have a single Level 4 M.Biol.Sci. masters student studying palaeontology this year. Emma Russell

is working on chitinozoans and scolecodonts from a Middle Devonian horizon in the Huergas

Formation in northern Spain that is unusually rich in such remains.

Emma checking out the ‘scolecodont-producing’ annelids in the Alfred Denny Museum

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The 2015 Palaeontological Association undergraduate prize was awarded to Chloe Walker-Trivett.

Chloe’s 4th-year M.Biol.Sci. project involved a study of the enigmatic Devonian ‘plant’ Pachytheca.

Chloe collected colonies of the modern cyanobacteria Rivularia and compared their anatomy to

fossil Pachytheca demonstrating remarkable similarities that suggest that Pachytheca may indeed

represent a colonial cyanobacterium.

Congratulations to…

Dr Jenny Morris who has just completed her three-year post. doc. working on the NERC standard grant “Evolutionary rise of deep-rooting forests and enhanced chemical weathering: quantitative investigations into the current paradigm”. During her time with us Jenny produced outstanding work that is beginning to emerge in the literature (see below) and will continue to do so for the next few years. Jenny has accepted a new post-doctoral position on a recently awarded 3-year NERC standard grant “The origins of plants: genomes, rocks and biogeochemical cycles” (P.I.s Philip Donoghue, Dianne Edwards, Harald Schneider, Charles Wellman, Ziheng Yang). Jenny will be based in Bristol with Phil Donoghue.

Professor Philip Donoghue FRS on his election to the Royal Society--an honour bestowed on only a

very few palaeontologists. Phil studied for an M.Sc. in Palynology at Sheffield 1992-1993 and was

awarded a merit for his dissertation “The palynology and stratigraphy of the Gorstian-Ludfordian

stage boundary at Leinthall Quarry, Ludlow Anticline, Herefordshire”. Phil went on to complete a

Ph.D. in conodont studies under the supervision of Dick Aldridge at the University of Leicester.

During his time in Sheffield Phil resided in Ken Dorning’s rented property, as was customary at the

time, living with the likes of Rod Black, Paul Dodsworth, Jane Evans and others of that generation.

Outreach

Unfortunately due to everybody being away at the CIMP meeting we were unable to attend the

Yorkshire Fossil Festival that this year was held in York. Hopefully next year it won’t coincide with a

major palynological conference!

The Sheffield Centre for Palynology stand at the Yorkshire Fossil Festival in Scarborough last year

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Laboratory, Collections and Library News

Last year Bob Keen took over the role as Laboratory Manager following the retirement of Steve Ellin.

Unfortunately this year Bob also decided to take early retirement. We are hoping to hear about a

new appointment soon! We have had some significant building work in the lab as Chemistry

construct a new corridor that runs through the end of our rock crushing room. Although we lose a

little space we are being supplied with a new system for sample washing as the two redundant fume

hoods are removed and replaced by a large sink and associated drainage/drying area. During the

reconstruction work we also had all four fume hoods in the main rock digestion laboratory fully

serviced and new flow detectors installed.

Publications 2015

Clark, N.D.L., Gillespie, R., Morris, S.F. & Clayton, G. 2015. A new early Carboniferous crustacean from the Forest of Dean,

England. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 12, DOI:10.1080/14772019.2015.1096848.

Morris, J. L., Leake, J. R., Stein, W. E., Berry, C. M., Marshall, J. E. A., Wellman, C. H., Milton, J. A., Hillier, S., Mannolini,

F., Quirk, J. & Beerling, D. J. 2015. Investigating Devonian trees as geo-engineers of past climates: linking palaeosols to

palaeobotany and experimental geobiology. Palaeontology 58, 787-801.

Paris, F., Verniers, J., Miller, M. A., Al-Hajri, S., Melvin, J. and Wellman, C. H. 2015. Late Ordovician – earliest Silurian

chitinozoans from the Qusaiba-1 core hole (North Central Saudi Arabia) and their relation to the Hirnantian Glaciation.

Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 212, 60-84.

Rooney, A., Goodhue, R. & Clayton, G. 2015. Stable nitrogen isotope analysis of the Upper Devonian palynomorph,

Tasmanites. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 429, 13-21.

Slater, S. M., Taylor, W. A., Batten, D. J., Hill, C. R. & Wellman, C. H. 2015. Morphology and wall ultrastructure of a new

and highly distinctive megaspore from the Middle Jurassic of Yorkshire, UK, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 216,

33-43.

Slater, S. M. & Wellman, C. H. 2015. A quantitative comparison of dispersed spore/pollen and plant megafossil

assemblages from a Middle Jurassic plant bed form Yorkshire, UK. Paleobiology 41, 640-660.

Wallace, S., Chater, C. C., Kamisugi, Y., Cuming, A. C., Wellman, C. H., Beerling, D. J. & Fleming, A. J. 2015. Conservation of

MALE STERILITY 2 function during spore and pollen wall development supports an evolutionary early recruitment of a core

component in the sporopollenin biosynthetic pathway. New Phytologist 205, 390-401.

Wellman, C. H. 2015. Spore assemblages from the Lower Devonian ‘Lower Old Red Sandstone’ deposits of the Northern

Highlands of Scotland: the Berriedale Outlier. Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of

Edinburgh 105, 227-238.

Wellman, C. H., Breuer, P., Miller, M. A., Owens, B. & Al-Hajri, S. 2015. Editorial: Palaeozoic palynostratigraphy of the

Arabian plate [a joint project between Saudi Aramco and the Commission Internationale de Microflore du Paleozoique

(CIMP)]. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 212, 1-2

Wellman, C. H., Steemans, P. & Miller, M. A. 2015. Spore assemblages from Upper Ordovician and lowermost Silurian

sediments recovered from the Qusaiba-1 shallow core hole, Qasim region, central Saudi Arabia. Review of Palaeobotany

and Palynology 212, 111-126.

Wellman, C. H. & Strother, P. K. 2015. The terrestrial biota prior to the origin of land plants (embryophytes): a review of

the evidence. Palaeontology 58, 601-627.

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Meetings 2015

Members of the Centre for Palynology have attended a number of meetings this year and presented

a variety of talks and posters (many of you will have witnessed these). These are listed below:-

TMS Palynology Group Meeting, University of Northumbria [Askew, Wellman, Wood]

CIMP Meeting Bergen, Norway [Askew, Clayton, Wellman]

Linnean Society Palaeobotany Specialist Group, London [Askew, Wellman]

Linnean Society Palynology Specialist Group, London [Askew, Mvamba, Oktay, Slater, Wellman]

TMS AGM Liverpool [Wood]

Palaeontological Association Annual Meeting, Cardiff [Askew, Wellman]

Fieldwork 2015

Alex commenced his Ph.D. fieldwork in northern Spain. A reconnaissance mission in January,

together with Charles, scouted out the Asturian coastal and inland Leonese exposures, although

work in the Cantabrian Mountains was severely disrupted by unseasonal heavy snow fall! A

subsequent solo visit in August was not disrupted by snow and over 100 samples were collected

from a transect across Asturias, Leon and Palencia. Charles undertook his usual May visit to Scotland

where he continued work on the Lower Old Red Sandstone of the Midland Valley. Steph’s ‘fieldwork’

was limited to the offices of Shell, Aberdeen where she mastered Stratabugs during an extended

visit.

Alex (minute figure at the bend in the road) attempting to examine a road cut in the Cantabrian Mountains, Spain

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Visitors

As usual we welcomed a number of visitors to the Centre for Palynology this year. Carlos Neregato

(University of Birmingham) came to check out a number of theses in an attempt to identify some in

situ Carboniferous spores. Viktoria Baranyi (University of Oslo) spent a week learning TEM

techniques and sectioning the enigmatic Triassic spore/pollen Froelicksporites traversei. She

reported on her exciting findings at the Linnean Sociaty Palynology Specialist Group meeting in

London in November. Former Ph.D. students who dropped in included Faisal Abuhmida and Khaled

Gaddah from Libya, Awad Ibrahim from Sudan, and Hisham Bakri who is back in the UK.

Second edition of ‘Sorby’s legacy: Geology at the University of Sheffield’

Due to popular demand a second edition of Alison Hunter’s excellent book ‘Sorby’s legacy: geology

at the University of Sheffield’ has been published. Details of how to purchase the book are available

at the website [http://www.geologyatsheffield.co.uk]. We are extremely grateful to Alison who has

donated all profits from the sales of her book to establish an alumni fund for the Centre for

Palynology. This fund is used to finance student fieldwork and conference attendance. We

thoroughly recommend you browse the website, which is updated at regular intervals, and is

crammed full of information including wonderful old photographs and other historical archives. You

may also want to send Alison information or photographs to be included.

“Sorby’s Legacy: Geology at the University of Sheffield” by R. Alison Hunter is now in its 2nd

edition

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Christmas party

The 2015 Christmas party was held on Saturday 5th December. Festivities remained at the Red Deer

where we hired out the upstairs room for a traditional Christmas dinner. Thirteen palynologists

attended including current Sheffield palynologists, MB Stratigraphy, and various other alumni

including Barry Lomax and Meyrick Quincey. Many thanks to Alex Askew for organising this highly

entertaining event.

The Christmas party 2015 upstairs in the Red Deer

A plea for information and to keep in touch…

Please keep in touch (e-mail c.wellman@sheffield.ac.uk) and keep us updated with respect to your

contact details. And most importantly--please send in your alumni news for the next newsletter.