Micropalaeontologists of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries
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Published:January 01, 2013
Abstract
As the Middle East is the prime hydrocarbon province in the world, it is not surprising that micropalaeontological biostratigraphy has been employed by the various national and international oil companies to provide chronostratigraphic, lithostratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental control for surface and subsurface samples. The discovery of oil in Iran in 1908, followed by Bahrain in 1932, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1938, Qatar in 1939, Abu Dhabi in 1959, Oman in 1963 and Yemen in 1984, led to a proliferation of micropalaeontological laboratories in each country, and numerous taxonomic publications on the Mesozoic and Tertiary foraminifera. The early micropalaeontologists in...
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Contents
Landmarks in Foraminiferal Micropalaeontology: History and Development

This TMS Special Publication comprises a collection of 23 papers with an international authorship reflecting on landmarks in the history and development of Foraminiferal micropalaeontology. The volume is prefaced by an introductory overview that provides a brief and selected historical setting, as well as the intended aims of the book. Selected developments in Foraminiferal studies from a global perspective are presented from the time of Alcide d’Orbignyand the founding of the Paris MNHN collections in the mid-nineteenth century to the use of foraminifera in industry, other museum collections, palaeoceanography and environmental studies, regional studies from the Southern Hemisphere and the riseand fall of significant research schools. The book concludes with a chapter on the modelling of foraminifera. Landmarks in Foraminiferal Micropalaeontology: History and Development will be of particular interest to micropalaeontologists, other Earth scientists, historians of science, museum curators and the general reader with an interest in science.