Foraminifera - Scientific Art Reproduction - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Reproduction engraving of: Foraminifera

Original title Thalamophora - Kammerlinge

Poster of Miliola - Protozoa of the main class Thalamophores (Legion of Foraminifera)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum Protozoa
Main class Rhizopoda (Rhizopoda)
Class of Foraminifera (Thalamophora)
Legion of perforated walls (Foraminifera or Perforata)
Family Miliolida

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Thalamophora - Foraminifera :

The Chambers (Thalamophora) represented on this plate belong specifically to the family Miliolids, a division of the Marine Impermeables (Foraminifera); they are distinguished from the other legion of the class, the Perforates (Foraminifera, Plate 2), by their solid, porcelain-like shell, not perforated with small sieve-like holes. The numerous pseudopodia or motile pseudopodia, radiating from the living cell body enclosed in the shell, therefore do not pass through the sieve holes of the shell in these Foraminifera, but rather through the simple opening of the last, youngest chamber (Figs. 1, 2, 6a, 12a, 15) or through the holes of a plate which closes this opening (Figs. 5, 9a, 10a, 16). From an early age, all Miliolids are monostegated (Monostegia), while later in life their growing shells usually have numerous chambers that increase in size and are incompletely separated by septa. These multichambered forms (Polystegia) can reach a diameter of over 30 mm.

Species present on the Foraminifera - Miliola naturalist board :

• Miliola parkeri
• Miliola reticulata
• Miliola striolata
• Cornuspira planorbis
• Articulina sagra
• Spiroloculina nitida
• Alveolina melo
• Peneroplis planata
• Hauerina circinata
• Hauerina ornatissima
• Vertebralina mucronata
• Vertebralina insignis
• Vertebralina catena
• Vertebralina furcata
• Biloculina comata
• Orbiculina adunca
• Orbitolites laciniata