Production of the original catalogue
The original descriptions of calcareous nannofossils have been made in numerous different journals, conference proceedings volumes, and books, hence, they can be very difficult to access. Taking inspiration from the Micropaleontology Project (http://www.micropress.org/history.html) and its illustrated catalogue of the Foraminifera, Prof. Anna Farinacci set about rectifying this, by compiling descriptions into a standard format and republishing them in a succession of loose-leafed volumes from 1969 to 1989. These 13 volumes were published by Edizione Tecnoscienze and distributed to subscribers across the world.
The data on each taxon is given on a separate sheet, or sheets, and is re-organised into the following fields: Taxon Citation; Illustrations; Description; Remarks; Type Level; Type Locality; Depository; Author; Reference. The volumes were produced as the original descriptions/publications became available, and when time was available for the project. Consequently, each volume included an ad hoc mix of publications, but, since they were produced loose-leafed, it was possible to re-arrange the volumes into a consistent order.
This catalogue was widely used by nannofossil workers, especially biostratigraphers needing to keep abreast of the rapidly proliferating list of new taxa, their inevitable synonyms and their stratigraphic contexts from regions of the globe that were opening up to hydrocarbon exploration and the Deep Sea Drilling Project. develop refined taxonomies of nannofossils. Pressure on Prof. Farinacci’s time meant that the catalogue was not maintained after 1989 (despite her receiving help from Dr. Andrea Fiorentino with the last volume), and the shift towards digital publishing means it would not be cost-effective to restart it now. Nonetheless, it is an invaluable source of data, and the INA has long been interested both in making it more widely available and incorporating it in new initiatives.
Copyright transfer to INA and production of this digital version
In 2008-2009 discussions were held between Anna Farinacci, Simonetta Monechi, Giuliana Villa and Paul Bown, facilitated by various colleagues in Italy. From these, Prof Farinacci generously transferred copyright to the INA. Subsequently, Jackie Lees got funding (from Shell via Shirley van Heck) and had the UCL copy of the catalogue scanned. The individual page-files were then tagged with the species names by Debbie Pledge, a volunteer at the Natural History Museum, working with Jeremy Young. Finally, iView was used to rename the files, using the tags. This version was included on the CD-ROM included in JNR issue 32-2.
For inclusion in Nannotax the same content has been used but with the genera sorted into folders alphabetically by first letter. The pages are displayed as thumbnails and can be browsed in the same manner as the pages in the main part of the Nannotax website. To find a particular taxon it is best to use the searchbox. When searching, you need to remember that generic combinations and specific epithet endings may have changed. So, for example, a search for Biscutum dubium will not find anything but a search for ‘dubi’ will find the original description of the species as Palaeopontosphaera dubia. [update: the search system now intelligently searches for alternative Latin species endings; nonentheless it is still better to search for a species name, e.g. dubium, rather than a full name, e.g. Biscutum dubium].Links to Farinacci catalog pages are also provided in the main Nannotax modules thus providing a quick way for users to see the original descriptions of taxa. These include links to the basionym descriptions for taxa which have been recombined, and to synonyms. The coverage of synonyms is now rather comprehensive, even for Mesozoic taxa. This has been achieved in part by going through all the species in the catalog trying wherever possible to determine what modern species is represented.
