Strew slide from Brady hot spring, Nevada. Fossil material (late Miocene I think). Prepared by Emiliano Bellotti. Mounted in Naphrax and dated 2024. Range of species, mainly smaller in size. I picked a couple of Tetracyclus sp. for stacking. Olympus BHB microscope using 450nm LED light. 63x Leitz Pl Apo 1.4 objective, oil immersion. Olympus Aplanat Achromat condenser, oil immersion, oblique lighting. 2.5x Nikon CF PL photoeyepiece. Monochrome converted Nikon d850 camera. One is (I am fairly sure) Tetracyclus cruciformis, 30 images stacked in Zerene (Pmax). The other is another Tetracyclus sp. perhaps T. stella, 28 images stacked in Zerene (Pmax).
At this scale, everything looks interesting, so I also did a few additional images of different things. Single frames, no stacking, using the same 63x Leitz objective with oblique lighting as for the stacks above. These are shown below.
Above I wanted to show not a diatom but a piece of ‘dirt’. Presumably a grain of sand or piece of another mineral. What I thought was interesting as it shows a lot of stress/fractures. Below are various fragments (diatom and/or otherwise).
And to finish off, the same scene, at two different focus depths, showing the different structures in the same diatoms.
