Pubs@ThePub
What will we find under the microscope in the next sample? Some plant remains? charcoal? animal fossils? You never fully know until you have a look through the microscope.
After preparing the samples and having a look, one item really stood out. Was it a fossil plant seed? or something chitinous, from an invertebrate animal? See Fig 5–8 below. Having a quick look for cellularity patterns, does it have clear cell wall structuring like typical plant remains. Or, is it relatively smooth looking? What happens when we poke at it? Still unclear, it is time to send photos around the world to additional experts! The adventure continued with emails through paleoecological mailing lists, such as the Quaternary Entomology listserver, to see who may recognise this fossil or have some tips to solve the identification mystery. A couple of clues came back from our amazing colleagues, this could be a relatively distinct freshwater Bryozoa. With this information, it was time to contact some specific experts directly, which helped support the identification as Lophopodella capensis. A taxon that is rarely recorded in published records and remains relatively unreported in recent decades. The serendipitous observation was reported in the journal African Invertebrates, almost ten years ago (Courtney Mustaphi et al., 2016) and was cited in a larger work on Bryozoan Paleoecology (Taylor, 2020). Later, the sediment cores were further analysed for sedimentology, pollen and charcoal records (Githumbi, 2017; Githumbi et al., 2021).
References
Courtney Mustaphi CJ, Githumbi EN, Shotter LR, Rucina SM, Marchant R. 2016. Subfossil statoblasts of Lophopodella capensis (Sollas, 1908) (Bryozoa: Phylactolaemata: Lophopodidae) in the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene sediments of a montane wetland, Eastern Mau Forest, Kenya. African Invertebrates 7(1): 39–52. doi: 10.3897/afrinvertebr.57.8191. [Data available]
Courtney Mustaphi, C; Githumbi, E; Shotter, L; Rucina, S; Marchant, R. 2016. “Radiocarbon dates, magnetic susceptibility and subfossil remains of Lophopodella capensis (Sollas, 1908) data from a sediment core collected from Enapuiyapui wetland, Eastern Mau Forest, Kenya”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ONKLLL, Harvard Dataverse, V2.
Githumbi, E.N., 2017. Holocene environmental and human interactions in East Africa (Doctoral dissertation, University of York).
Githumbi E, Courtney Mustaphi C, Marchant R. 2021. Late Pleistocene and Holocene Afromontane vegetation variability at a headwater wetland within the Eastern Mau Forest, Kenya. Journal of Quaternary Science 36(2): 239–254. DOI: 10.1002/jqs.3267
Taylor, PD. 2020. Bryozoan paleobiology. John Wiley & Sons. http://doi.org/10.1002/9781118454961
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21.12.2025 CCM