Abstract
The siliceous-walled microfossils include radiolarian, diatoms and silicoflagellates. The radiolarians are single-celled, marine zooplankton, varying in size from 30 μm to 2 mm in diameter, and diatoms are single-celled, free-floating or attached golden-brown algae belonging to the Phylum Chrysophyta. The radiolarian and diatoms are together the major contributors of silica in the ocean. The silicoflagellates are unicellular phytoplankton, ranging in size from 20 to 100 μm and referred to as Chrysophyceae. The morphology of these microfossils is described and illustrated, along with their ecology and geologic distributions. The ecologically distinct assemblages of modern radiolarian and diatoms are explained. Several of the species in the indicator assemblages are traced back to the Miocene and, therefore, the two groups of microfossils are most widely used in paleoceanography to reconstruct paleotemperature and paleoproductivity.
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Further Reading
Anderson OR (1983) Radiolaria. Springer, New York
Lipps JH (1993) Fossil prokaryotes and protists. Blackwell, Boston
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Saraswati, P.K., Srinivasan, M.S. (2016). Siliceous-Walled Microfossils. In: Micropaleontology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14574-7_7
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