Radiolarians are holoplanktonic protozoa, a form of plankton found throughout the worlds oceans. One of the most interesting aspects of these organisms is that they possess a skeleton composed of amorphous silica. Their skeletons take on a diverse set of forms from ornate geodesic-like polyhedral lattices, spike encrusted spheres, to other complex geometric designs...

Let's take a closer look at some beautiful pictures of these Radiolarians Skeletons...

Mixed Radiolarians in Darkfield Illumination
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Coloured SEM of a radiolarian, Cecryphalium sp.
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Replication of the SEM (scanning electron Microscope) look of a Radiolarian
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Christopher B. Jackson - Berne, Switzerland - Specimen: Radiolarian skeleton. Radiolarians are single-cell protozoa with intricate mineral skeletons. Technique: Brightfield imaging, extended depth of field
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Photomicrograph of radiolarians taken at X1500 by using a scanning electron microscope.
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German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) focus for many years was an intricate, single-celled organism known as a Radiolarian. In his initial work with them, he found, named and depicted over 150 diverse species. He would go on to document thousands more...

These are the 35 copper plates that accompanied Ernst Haeckel's Radiolaria book from 1862.
This volume has kindly been provided by Prof. Dr. Peter von Sengbusch (Institut für allgemeine Botanik, Hamburg, Germany).

The 35 plates were scanned by Kurt Stüber using a Hewlett Packard ScanJet 6100C flat bed scanner. Earch plate was scanned twice: 1. using 100 dpi resolution and 2. using 300 dpi resolution, since 100 dpi did not reproduce all the fine details of the engravings. The size of the 100 dpi scans is about 3 MByte (uncompressed) or about 500 to 700 KByte (compressed). The 300 dpi scans range at about 27 MByte (uncompressed) or 4 MByte (compressed).

Hint: Use the 100 dpi scans for viewing in your browser. The 300 dpi scans are so big, that they probably will not been displayed by your browser. Better download them into your computer and user Photoshop or any other image manipulation program to display or print them.

Check out all the high-res 35 plates of Haeckel's drawings here