Sixty-one thousand recent planktonic foraminifera from the Atlantic Ocean

Marine microfossils record the environmental, ecological, and evolutionary dynamics of past oceans in temporally expanded sedimentary archives. Rapid imaging approaches provide a means of exploiting the primary advantage of this archive, the vast number of fossils, for evolution and ecology. Here we provide the first large scale image and 2D and 3D shape dataset of modern planktonic foraminifera, a major microfossil group, from 34 Atlantic Ocean sediment samples. Information on more than 124,000 objects is provided, including general object classification for 4/5ths of the dataset (~ 99,000 objects). Of the ~ 99,000 classifications provided, more than 61,000 are complete or damaged planktonic foraminifera. Objects also include benthic foraminifera, ostracods, pteropods, spicules, and planktonic foraminifera test fragments, among others. This dataset is the first major microfossil output of a new high-throughput imaging method (AutoMorph) developed to extract 2D and 3D data from photographic images of fossils. Our sample preparation and imaging techniques are described in detail. The data provided here comprises the most extensive publically available archive of planktonic foraminiferal morphology and morphological variation to date.