RAD-00000◆ Holotype
Actinomma hexagona
Silica, opaline — 8-fold · det. C. Aubrey
Station—
Depth—
Shells—
Collected—
Glass the
animal left
Every skeleton in this cabinet is opaline silica — glass a single-celled animal spun from seawater, then abandoned as it sank. No two lattices repeat. We catch each one under darkfield, draw its six- or eight-fold net while the light still holds it, and name it on the spot before it drifts out of frame.
The type below is set live: the binomial's serif widens its optical size as a plate is enlarged under the scope, and tightens again when it is filed small into the drawer. What you read is what the glass measured.
The Drawer
Catalogued this session · 0
01
Under darkfield
A hollow cone of light strikes the specimen from the side, so only what the glass scatters reaches the lens. The lattice glows against a black field; the water disappears. It is how these skeletons were first drawn in 1862, and how they are drawn here.
02
Radial law
Radiolaria build to a fixed symmetry — most often six or eight arms about a central capsule, with concentric shells bridged by silica bars. One wedge is spun, then repeated around the axis. Break the law and the animal cannot stand; keep it and every plate is both unique and unmistakably its kind.
03
Named while it holds
The genus is assembled from the old descriptive roots — actino-, hexa-, litho-, -sphaera, -phormis — and married to an epithet for the trait in view. A name has seconds before the current carries the specimen off. We give it one.