186 New Approaches to Old Fossil Collections (Posters)
Material collected during the early history of paleontology conserves deep time ecosystems and remains available for study. We invite presentations of new analyses and interpretations of well-studied collections in the context of the broader history of the discipline.
Tuesday, 21 October 2025
8:00 AM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, Hall 1
Ninety-Five Years of Research into Pre-Carboniferous Foraminifera of the Western Hemisphere
Paper number: 186-5
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:00 AM
Authors
Abstract
The study of Pre-Carboniferous foraminifera in the western hemisphere spans nearly a century, beginning in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s with the foundational works of Moreman, Thomas, Miller and Carmer, Ireland, Grubbs, Dunn, and Cushman and Stainbrook. These early researchers described foraminifers from Silurian and Devonian carbonate sequences originally deposited in paleobasins of Laurentia, now located in the contemporary states of Oklahoma, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. Most of the reported foraminifers were agglutinated, but the authors Thomas, Miller and Carmer, and Cushman and Stainbrook also reported calcareous foraminifers in Upper Devonian strata of Iowa. These authors established thirteen new foraminiferal genera and described numerous new species, assigning many of the unilocular and bichambered species to genera characteristic of Holocene deep-sea environments. These pioneering contributions laid the groundwork for subsequent taxonomic and stratigraphic studies.
Between the 1940s and 1980s, researchers including Stewart, Miller, Browne, Ireland, Mound, McClellan, Gutschick, and the Conkins expanded the taxonomic and geographic scope of Pre-Carboniferous agglutinated foraminiferal research into Indiana, Ohio, Western New York, Kansas, Nevada, and Kentucky in the USA. Loranger and Toomey identified multiple calcareous species in thin sections from the Upper Devonian of Alberta, Canada. Pre-Carboniferous foraminifers of South America have only more recently come under investigation by Vachard with coauthors and G. Nestell with coauthors.
Re-examining the type specimens of the collections of the authors listed above, which are present in several regional museums, mostly in the United States, should refine our understanding of the diversity and evolutionary development of early foraminifers as well as their uses in biostratigraphy.
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6
doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414584
© Copyright 2025 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.