Cenozoic Biostratigraphy and Global Change

Abstract. INTRODUCTION

In May 1989 a British Micropalaeontological Society Symposium Meeting was held at the University of East Anglia under the title “Cenozoic Biostratigraphy and Global Change”. Fourteen lectures were given on this theme, many of them originating from investigations of DSDP/IPOD and ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) samples. All addressed the potential of micropalaeontological observations for interpreting the history of global and regional oceanographic and climatic change. Many results of this type of investigation are currently appearing in science journals such as “Paleoceanography” and “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology” as well as in the “Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program”. British micropalaeontologists are taking an active part in this research, but relatively few of the resultant papers have so far appeared in the Journal of Micropalaeontology.

Many of the lectures given at the May 1989 Symposium represented work already recently published, or due to be subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program. Four papers, representing ongoing research not then due to be published, have been brought together here as a small thematic set, illustrating a variety of approaches to “Cenozoic Biostratigraphy and Global Change”. They range across Ostracoda, Coccolithophorida, Planktonic and Benthic Foraminifera, through the entire Cenozoic, including the latest Quaternary, and they include results from both the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

TITLES

“Global Change and the Biostratigraphy of North Atlantic Cenozoic deep water Ostracoda” - Robin C. Whatley and Graham P. Coles.

“Palaeoclimatic control of Upper Pliocene Discoaster assemblages in the North Atlantic” - Alex. Chepstow-Lusty, Jan Backman. . .