Chia-Wei Li et al. describe microfossils found in Doushantuo phosphate rocks from Guizhou Province, South China that are about 580 million years old (1). Well-preserved macroscopic multicellular fossils associated with prokaryotic and eukaryotic microfossils from the same source rocks have been documented in several studies (2– 6). The Doushantuo fossils are outstanding in both preservation qua...

Accessing information on plant consumption before the adoption of agriculture is challenging. However, there is growing evidence for use of locally available wild plants from an increasing number of pre-agrarian sites, suggesting broad ecological knowledge. The extraction of chemical compounds and microfossils from dental calculus removed from ancient teeth offers an entirely new perspective on...

The identification and confirmation of bona fide Archean-Paleoproterozoic microfossils can prove to be a challenging task, further compounded by diagenetic and metamorphic histories. While structures of likely biological origin are not uncommon in Precambrian rocks, the search for early fossil life has been disproportionately focused on lesser thermally altered rocks, typically greenschist or l...

Owing to the delicate nature of fossil microorganisms and inherent difficulties for discriminating true fossils from artifacts, an important challenge is to extract unequivocal biogenic information from individual microfossils using high-resolution, nondestructive and sensitive techniques. Here, we use combined synchrotron (X-ray microfluorescence, X-ray absorption near-edge structure and infra...

Abstract Microfossils are important components of sedimentary rocks used for palaeontological, biostratigraphic, palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic investigations. They usually extracted from using an acid solution, which might vary depending on the embedding rock lithology. Here we propose a new method common NaOH (sodium hydroxide; soda) to digest cherts (micro‐ cryptocrystalline quartz) ...

In order to realize effective and efficient training for diagnosis of NPP anomalies, a training support system has been developed. The feature of the system is realtime measurement of trainee’s attending plant parameters and his/her think aloud while he/she is diagnosing a primary cause of plant anomaly. An evaluation experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the system and to e...

Opaline phytoliths are important microfossils used for paleoecological and archaeological reconstructions that are primarily based on relative ratios of specific morphotypes. Recent studies have shown that phytolith assemblages are prone to post-depositional alteration involving partial dissolution, however, the manner in which partial dissolution affects morphotype composition is poorly unders...

Organic-walled microfossils provide the best insights into the composition and evolution of the biosphere through the first 80 percent of Earth history. The mechanism of microfossil preservation affects the quality of biological information retained and informs understanding of early Earth palaeo-environments. We here show that 1 billion-year-old microfossils from the non-marine Torridon Group ...

The paper deals with the detailed pharmacognosy of the whole plant of Orilaitamarai (Hybanthus enneasperms) sold in the local market under the name Purusharatna, Ratanpursuha. The studies include macro, microscopical, histochemical and diagnostic characters of the root, stem and leaf. The physical constants, fluorescence characteristics and chromatographic studies of the whole plant are also pr...