Fossils in Thin Section: It is Not That Difficult

Many students of carbonate rocks are bewildered and sometimes frustrated by the morphological and microstructural diversity of skeletal grains and are satisfied by distinguishing major fossil groups. The present chapter will hopefully demonstrate that more detailed identifications of thin-section fossils are not so difficult and that identifications at lower systematic levels can provide fresh insights into the environmental controls on depositional processes. However, keep in mind, that thin-section fossils present only a part of the biota present in the rock and that thin-section diversity is not equivalent to biotic diversity (see Sect. 6.2.1.4).