Dec '17 Zooniverse Project Update: Ya'll are great at counting stomata!

Hello!

The Fossil Atmospheres team is very excited about all the hard work you have been putting in for us; thanks to your amazing efforts we recently passed the 15,000 classification mark! The results so far are very encouraging, but we still have a long way to go, so we thought we’d give you all a quick update and some motivation for more counting.

The great news is that you’re all really good at finding all the stomata, which is the most important part. For all the other normal cells we’ve found that a team effort really is the best way forward; the aggregate of all your classifications form clusters that give us the correct cell counts. We’ve included an image below so you can see what this looks like in progress. Please keep up the good work!

If you’ve been following us on twitter @FossilAt you’ll know our experimental Ginkgos recently dropped all their leaves, and we’ve been busily collecting them all to prepare new images for you. You can find all the details on our blog here. We also went fossil ginkgo hunting in Wyoming over the summer, and brought back some beautiful specimens to image.

We’re busy analysing all the data and writing up results for publication, so watch this space.

Happy holidays from Rich, Laura, and the rest of the Fossil Atmospheres team!