Well you see lots of small things with microscopy. At the moment I am using fluorescence microscopy a lot, where you stain different parts of a cell to ‘glow’ different colours. This way you can highlight individual sections like the nucleus or components of the cell membrane.
I used to work with tiny parasites called trypanosomes, which look like worms but are much much smaller than the human cells in your blood. The cool thing with them was that the best way to check if they were alive in a sample was to watch them wiggling with the microscope!
Electron microscopy allows you to see even tinier details, using beams of electrons instead of light. There is an example image on my profile of some bacteria stuck to real human gut lining from a patient.
I guess my fossil beetles are pretty small. Sometimes we find little ectoparasites, like human flies and lice, these are pretty small. You get these preserved on some archaeological sites where preservation is good. Occasionally, you can find them in their thousands! Its clear that people in the past had problems with personal hygiene and probably spent much time scratching themselves!!
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Nicki commented on :
I guess my fossil beetles are pretty small. Sometimes we find little ectoparasites, like human flies and lice, these are pretty small. You get these preserved on some archaeological sites where preservation is good. Occasionally, you can find them in their thousands! Its clear that people in the past had problems with personal hygiene and probably spent much time scratching themselves!!