Devonian Ostracods from Paulding, OH (2022)

These photos first appeared in a separate thread on the forum. Go to fossil sites/Ohio/species list Paulding  fossil Gardens thread for more information.

These are microfossils were picked from samples at the Fossil Gardens in Paulding, OH.  This site has mainly Middle Devonian (~390 mya) Silica Formation material.

The samples were processed using a variety of methods, such as repeated kerosene and water soaks to split the sample.  The resulting smaller pieces and fine sediment were further "cooked" in hot water with various detergents to try to remove as much matrix from the microfossils as possible.  The sediment was then dried and sieved into fractions.  Most of these specimens came from the 45 mesh and 80 mesh sieves.  

The photos were taken using a macrophotography rail-mounted Nikon D7000 fitted with a 10x microscope objective.  Due to the reduced depth of field using a microscope lens, many photographs at slight different distances from the specimen were taken.  This resulting stack of photos was then processed using Helicon Focus software resulting a final photograph.