New year, back in the lab

Last year I thought I'd be back in the lab, picking forams for radiocarbon dating, but life kept getting in the way. Especially the students vs staff debacle was taking up time. It still does; I'll post another update if and when it's finally really over. But in spite of that I got quite some work done this first week of the new year. Together with our new-ish lab technician Martyn I am now zooming through both the remaining samples from 2014 and the first ones of 2015. Martyn prepares the samples and I check them under the microscope; I check if there are forams in them, as I can date them, and I also check if they are cold-water species. We are looking for the end of glaciation in the UK, so the sediments we hope to date are deposited in very cold conditions. If I see warm water species in my samples it means we have mis-targeted the stratigraphic level we sampled. And in the old year I didn't see many "Arctic" species but this week I have seen quite many. Soon I will have several samples ready! A good start of the new year...

My set-up in the lab

One of the species I like to see