In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The first ostracodans from the Gulf of Mexico were described by Brady (1870) from sediment collected near Veracruz and Carmen, Mexico. These included 3 new species plus 5 previously described from the Bahamas, and 7 of the 8 names remain valid today. During the next 80 years, the few taxonomists in North America studied mostly fossil and freshwater ostracodes rather than marine assemblages. After World War II, there was intense exploration for fossil hydrocarbons in Cenozoic sediments of the Gulf Coastal Plain and continental shelf. Although the value of Ostracoda as index fossils for biostratigraphic correlation had been demonstrated in the 1930s, almost nothing was known of their living descendants in the Gulf of Mexico. Now petroleum explorationists realized that effective recognition of potential reservoirs in this thick accumulation of alternating clays and sands would require meticulous discrimination of paleoenvironments. This new approach required analysis of sedimentary processes involved in the growth of deltas and barrier island systems; detailed description and classification of modern biotopes in the coastal zone, to serve as a standard of reference for ancient counterparts; and taxonomic and ecological evaluation of present-day relatives of those microfossils (including Ostracoda) deemed likely to provide useful indicators of paleosalinity and paleobathymetry. To address this need, the American Petroleum Institute Research Project 51: The Northwest Gulf of Mexico, 1951– 1958 was conducted. The results of this industrialacademic collaboration (Shepard, Phleger, and van Andel 1960) revolutionized our understanding of sedimentary depositional systems and environments, established new standards and opportunities for applied micropaleontology , and stimulated comparable research worldwide. Two of the initial investigations concerned Ostracoda of San Antonio Bay, Texas, and the Louisiana Delta (Swain 1955, Curtis 1960). Although the taxonomy of these pioneer studies has necessarily been revised many times, their methodological influence has been lasting. Fifty years later, more than 90% of world research on benthic marine Ostracoda is conducted by geologists rather than biologists , applying methods and principles that owe as much to applied micropaleontology and sedimentology as to modern ecology. The Ostracoda of the Gulf of Mexico were reviewed for Fisheries Bulletin 89 (the predecessor of this volume) by 877 49 Podocopan Ostracoda (Crustacea) of the Gulf of Mexico Rosalie F. Maddocks, María Luisa Machain-Castillo, and F. Raúl Gío-Argáez  Ostracoda: Podocopa. After Cushman 1906. 878 ~ Podocopan Ostracoda (Crustacea) Kornicker (1964) and King and Kornicker (1970). Garbett and Maddocks (1979) provided a comprehensive taxonomic and geographic reassessment of this fauna, clarifying relationships to late Cenozoic and living species on the Atlantic Coast. Coastal ostracodes of Louisiana, Mississippi , Alabama, and northern Florida remain less well known (Puri and Hulings 1957, Curtis 1960, Puri 1960, Benda and Puri 1962, Hulings and Puri 1964, Kontrovitz 1978, Krutak 1975a, b, 1978). The Florida Everglades fauna was comprehensively described by Keyser (1975, 1976a, b, 1977a, b) from live collections, with detailed illustrations of soft anatomy and careful recording of ecological parameters. There is less modern taxonomic information concerning the coralline and lagoonal ostracodes of the carbonate environments of the West Coast of Florida, Florida Bay, and the Florida Keys (Tressler 1954, Puri 1958, 1960, 1974, Benson and Coleman 1963, Puri and Dickau 1969, Dickau and Puri, 1976, Cronin 1995, 1996). For bathyal ostracodes of the Florida Strait there are only the preliminary identifications of Cronin (1983). Kontrovitz (1976) described assemblages from a sample array across the Louisiana shelf. For several other sampling programs across the northern shelf and slope of Texas and the eastern Gulf, little has been published except for a few bathymetric generalizations at the generic level (Rothwell 1949, Morkhoven 1972, LeRoy and Levinson 1974). Bathyal and abyssal ostracodes of the central Gulf remain mostly unknown. Lagoonal ostracodes of Mexico were studied by Sandberg (1964b, c), Morales (1966), Krutak (1971, 1972), and Carreno (1984). Reef assemblages near Veracruz were described by Krutak (1982, also Krutak and Rickles 1979, Krutak et al. 1980). Species distributions on the terrigenous shelf of the Bay of Campeche have now been summarized comprehensively, filling what was for many years a major gap in our knowledge of the Gulf, although the supporting taxonomic analysis of these faunas remains to be published (Machain-Castillo 1990, Machain-Castillo, Perez-Guzman and Maddocks 1990, Machain-Castillo and Gío Argáez 1991, 1992a, b, 1994). Documentation for the diverse coralline faunas of the northern and western Yucatan Platform consists mostly of preliminary checklists (Bold 1977, 1989, Machain-Castillo and Gío Argáez 1991, 1992a, b, 1994, Krutak and Gío Argáez 1994...

Share