Top Palynologist Interview Questions & Answers:

1. Tell me what is pollen analysis used for?

Pollen analysis, or Palynology, is a type of environmental archaeology in which microscopes are used to analyse the range of plant pollens present in archaeological layers: these can tell us what crops, vegetation or ground cover were likely to have been present when a layer was deposited.

2. What is acritarch?

Acritarchs are organic microfossils, present from approximately 1,400 to 3,200 million years ago to the present. Their diversity reflects major ecological events such as the appearance of predation and the Cambrian explosion.

3. Do you know what is Acetolysis?

Acetolysis is the best technique for recovering pollen because any tissue is dissolved and lipids and debris are removed from the sample and the pollen grains.

4. What is archaeological palynology?

Archaeological palynology studies polymorphs at archaeological sites to determine aspects of a life and ecology such as diet, ritual practice, climate, agriculture, and the impact that humans may have had on the environment. Palynomorphs studied may be fossil remains of non-extant life (paleopalynology) or remains of extant life forms (actuopalynology)

5. Tell me what is forensic palynology?

Forensic palynology is the study of pollen and powdered minerals, their identification, and where and when they occur, to ascertain that a body or other object was in a certain place at a certain time.

6. What is scolecodont?

A scolecodont is the jaw of a polychaete annelid, a common type of fossil-producing segmented worm useful in invertebrate paleontology. Scolecodonts are common and diverse microfossils, which range from the Cambrian period to the present. They diversified profusely in the Ordovician, and are most common in the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian marine deposits of the Paleozoic era.

7. What is forensic palynology?

Forensic palynology, the science of legal evidence derived from the study of pollen and spores.

8. What is orbicule?

Orbicules are small acellular structures of sporopollenin that might occur on the inner tangential and radial walls of tapetal cells. Their function is unclear at this moment. Current consensus is that they are just a by-product of pollen wall sporopollenin synthesis.

9. What is sediment?

Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand and silt can be carried in suspension in river water and on reaching the sea be deposited by sedimentation and if buried this may eventually become sandstone and siltstone, ( sedimentary rocks).

10. What is dinocyst?

Dinocysts or dinoflagellate cysts are typically 15 to 100 µm in diameter and produced by around 15-20% of living dinoflagellates as a dormant, zygotic stage of their lifecycle, which can accumulate in the sediments as microfossils. Organic-walled dinocysts are often resistant and made out of dinosporin. There are also calcareous dinoflagellate cysts and siliceous dinoflagellate cysts. Many books provide overviews on dinocysts.