Palynologist

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.