Calcareous nannofossils

"Nannoplankton" redirects here. For the generic diminutive plankton, see Plankton § Size groups, and Nanophytoplankton.
Discoaster surculus fossil, 15 microns across. The extinction of this species officially marks the beginning of the Quaternary period

Calcareous nannofossils are a class of tiny (less than 30 microns in diameter[1]) microfossils that are similar to coccoliths deposited by the modern-day coccolithophores.[2] The nannofossils are a convenient source of geochronological data due to the abundance and rapid evolution of the single-cell organisms forming them (nannoplankton)[3] and ease of handling of the sediment samples.[4] The practical applications of calcareous nannofossils in the areas of biostratigraphy and paleoecology[5] became clear once the deepwater drilling took off in 1968 with the Deep Sea Drilling Project,[4] and they have been extensively studied ever since.[5] Nannofossils provide one of the most important paleontological records with the contiguous length of 220 million years.[6]

  1. ^ Romein 1979, p. 7.
  2. ^ Incarbona et al. 2010, p. 820.
  3. ^ Siesser & Haq 1987, p. 116.
  4. ^ a b Siesser & Haq 1987, p. 90.
  5. ^ a b Siesser & Haq 1987, p. 87.
  6. ^ Agnini, Monechi & Raffi 2017, p. 449.