Now that I know how to use my DSLR and trinocular microscope together I took some photos of a slide to see how it looked.
Firstly the slide: J Lomax (1857-1934) was the son of a miner in Yorkshire in the 19th Century who saw plant fossils in the debris from the mines and started to look at them. He made sections of coal balls containing plant fossils and published descriptions of the specimens that he found. He also distributed and sold slides, founding a petrological company to do this commercially.
Several decades ago, having just completed my BSc, I was employed to help move our geological department which was moved to a new university.
Lots of material was thrown away in the process (to this day my stereo mic lives in a case that was in the skip).
One item in the skip that caught my eye was a small cardboard box containing slides. A number of these bear the commercial Lomax labels. This particular slide has hand written plain labels but under the coverslip is a hand initialed date "J L 27/10/09" so this may be one of his personal slides.
These fossils date from the Carboniferous 359-299 million years ago.
Please remember when looking at these photographs that the camera is balanced on bellows (with the wrong fitting) which are themselves balanced on the trinocular port and the whole lot has my hand trying to hold it still!
I believe that this is Lyginopteris oldhamia, first described by Williamson under the name of Kaloxvlon Hookeri. Locality: Shore, Littleborough, Yorkshire, UK.
At 10x
Then at 20x
Cheers
Steve
