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Ostracods have a long history of service to geology. Charles Lyell recognised their value for palaeoecological reconstructions as early as 1824 with his observations on a Scottish Quaternary lake deposit, while Edward Forbes in 1851 used them to subdivide the Upper Jurassic Purbeck Beds of Dorset in southern England with possibly the oldest zonal scheme based upon microfossils. The first of these two themes will be developed here, namely the application of Ostracod studies to the fields of environmental analysis. Ostracods are probably best known for this, where their distribution through a wide variety of aqueous habitats allows a unique contribution from micropalaeontology to the understanding of ancient environments. |
