CONCLUSIONS

This method was verified to be a great enhancement to the imaging of palynomorphs under optical microscopy. As taxonomic nomenclature can change over time, and possible differences in the identification among different palynologists can occur, illustration may be the only way to validate or verify published data years after the publication date. Thus, it cannot be overemphasized how important it is to use the best possible figures for palynomorphs, in association with the publication of palynological taxonomic lists. Not only does the software allow for reducing the number of photomicrographs necessary to describe palynomorphs, it also provides a more natural appearance to the depicted palynomorphs, more like that seen under the optical microscope. This improvement is obvious and helps with the recognition of specimens on a palynological slide by comparison with published taxa as printed in a journal. However, it should be noted that as a main limitation to this method, three-dimensional structures are collapsed into a two-dimensional image, which can result in one feature obscuring another, or two or more features being merged.

Additionally, while this type of image processing has proved to be very helpful for paleopalynology, the method can be extrapolated in any other case where depth of field reconstruction is needed. This technique could scale to others geological or paleontological objects such as microfossils (foraminifers, microvertebrates, and many others) observed under the binocular microscope, up to the largest dinosaur bones photographed with a camera stand or macro lenses.