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Chambered Ammonite in thin section


The QCC

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The photos presented here are thin sections of a single chamber of an Ammonite.
I recently obtained some broken fossil pieces from "Rocks and Gems Canada " for the purpose of slicing them and making thin sections for viewing through a microscope.

The first samples are from a Chambered Ammonite. The area of interest is the filling in the chambers. If I am lucky there will be crystal formation, but most of the time it is just fill. This is a web presentation of the photos below


The first two photos are the whole Ammonite as I received it. Photo one is a camera snapshot. Photo two is a stereo microscope composite of the Ammonite.

ChamberedAmmonite_1.thumb.jpg.a277533300e0cfdb6028ead32365395c.jpg

 

ChamberedAmmonite-1_3037_Full30.thumb.jpg.a27c4f6d535a055942d353907bdaec10.jpg

 

The following photos are 1) Polarized light, 2) Polarized light with a Dark Field filter in place.

Photos three and four are a single cell of the Ammonite showing what looks like crystal formations.

 

58b3269e39667_ChambeedAmmonite1-FS70-Z1_3421_Full10.thumb.jpg.b60014df6163a0656497f0acaabb858e.jpg

 

ChamberedAmmonite-FS70-Z1-DF_3459_Full11.thumb.jpg.64fd9e352b10934de09430979619c898.jpg

 

Photos five and six a 4mm segment of the chamber edge.

58b3269d8f62a_ChambeedAmmonite1-FS70-Z1_3379.thumb.jpg.993bcc51b649a130f8c5e6b4f736b44a.jpg

58b3269ec9066_ChambeedAmmonite1-FS70-Z1-DF_3380.thumb.jpg.130ef821d4256f4f29d77da16b5b7353.jpg

 

Photos seven and eight show a 1mm segment of a chamber edge.ChamberedAmmonite-FS70-Z3_3470.thumb.jpg.f1f49ff7ca52595958a1218033b4ad8a.jpg

ChamberedAmmonite-FS70-Z3-DF_3471.thumb.jpg.ef7ebcbe383f259cc70221fc98f53d03.jpg

 

 

 

 

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The crystals in this sample show good cleavage and relief. The thin section is approximately 50 microns thick.

This is pretty well the limit of my capabilities.
 

Under your category of "Kurioses und Humor" I would like to present a thin section of Periodotite  I call Big Bird.
Not a fossil, but humourous.
PeridotiteBigBird-1.jpg.6e5530aea3f3e64fa8c2905c06493838.jpg

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1 hour ago, The QCC said:

The crystals in this sample show good cleavage and relief.

The crystals are most likely calcite.

 

Nice pictures, thanks for sharing.

Tony

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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Calcite crystals.

Yes, that is what I had determined when I checked my reference guide "Rocks and Minerals in thin section" by MacKenzie and Adams, P63.

Calcite.thumb.jpg.65966058ada8b28506699bad2fc5e4bd.jpg

 

 

 

 

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great pix.  Yes,  I would agree with calcite.  It is very common inside ammonites.  

 

Can you explain what this means?:

"photo two is a stereo microscope composite of the Ammonite"

I often use my stereo microscope and Photoshop to make stereophotos of small fossils, but what is a stereo microscope composite?  

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The first photo was taken with a macro lens on a Canon camera. The second photo was taken with the same camera mounted on the Zeiss stemi 305edu microscope.
Unfortunately or fortunately, the working distance and the field of view of the microscope are quite small. Therefore multiple photos of the Ammonite were stitched together using Microsoft's  Image Composite Editor (ICE).
I included both images to show the microscope composite image has more detail than the traditional macro photo.

 

It may not be a fair comparison as the microscope has multiple light sources and the macro lens was using ambient light.
Also, the camera/macro image is 10MP in one photo whereas the microscope composite image is 24MP in 30 photos.

Microscope image ChamberedAmmonite-1_3037_Full30.jpg.f46d2907734aec5402dd7f3fa0ee318a.jpg

Camera photoChamberedAmmonite-1_IMG_2043.jpg.773507e3d9dc78b752fd07f01e0d53cc.jpg

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No, not stacked.

The slide stage is moved for each photo resulting in 30 different but overlapping photos. The software then arranges the photos to create a seamless image.

Microsoft ICE can stitch together many images regardless of the order they are taken.
My usual method is the photograph the along the longest edge in 4mm steps, shift the stage 3/4 of an image and photograph back along the long edge.

This partial scan of an Onchopristus Tooth shows the strip photo method I use. The full image has 15 photos.

OnchopristusTooth-2_3115_Full15.jpg.ba996843ec538b987d75aaa58af82b0a.jpg

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  • 5 months later...

nice photography

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"_ Carl Sagen

No trees were killed in this posting......however, many innocent electrons were diverted from where they originally intended to go.

" I think, therefore I collect fossils." _ Me

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."__S. Holmes

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