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Palynology in oil exploration
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands
Book Review Palynology in Oil Exploration. A. T. CROSS (Editor). A symposium sponsored by the research committee of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, S.E.P.M., Tulsa, Okla., 1964, 200 pp. Shortly after World War II the petroleum industry discovered the value of palynology in various geological aspects of petroleum exploration. This has greatly stimulated the development of palynology, with most of the major oil companies now employing palynologists. Whenever large groups of scientists have common interests, they organise symposia and other kinds of meetings. Consequently, a symposium on the role of palynology in modern oil exploration also became inevitable. The papers presented at the first symposium on the subject, held in San Francisco, Calif., March 26-27, 1962, are now available in book form. The proceedings fall into two parts, part I: Palynology - Principles, part II: Palynology - Applied. There is no full coverage of the subjects, contributions of general importance being included together with more local studies; the latter especially dominating part II. The stratigraphical significance of palynological research is treated more extensively than the paleoecological aspects. In the first part of the book the Editor presents an introductory paper on plant microfossils and geology. This is followed by a short but useful paper by M.F. Glaessner, which deals with palynology in relation to other micropaleontological methods, emphasizing the need for integration and cooperation in paleontology and stratigraphy. A good follow-up to this article is R.H. Tschudy's paper on the solution of time-stratigraphic problems with the aid of palynology and it contains stimulating sections on what the palynologist can do in this respect and how he must approach the problems. J.M. Schopfpresents an extensive review on practical problems and principles for geological use and study of plant microfossils, the methodological part being an excellent introduction to the subject. When considering the subject of classification a preference for a natural phylogenetic system is apparent, but justice is also done to artificial systems such as Tschudy's symbolic coding system. The reviewer wishes to point out that, in the present stage of study, for pre-Quaternary plant microfossils the use of an artificial system has evident advantages. For several sporomorphae it can not or can only vaguely be determined to which taxon they belong. Using an artificial system with well defined "taxa" implies that, with increasing knowledge on the relationships of the fossil remains, the results of countings can be easily transferred into terms of natural botanical taxa, and the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatol.,Palaeoecol., 1 (1965)333-334
334
BOOK REVIEW
interpretation can be currently adapted when necessary. If natural taxonomic units are used for the original counting, such later reinterpretations might be excluded; moreover it could lead to great confusion, as the following example illustrates: the organ species Tricolporopollenites cingulum non ssp. fusus, which occurs in the Tertiary of the Lower Rhine area, was originally referred by Potoni6, with much reserve, to the Punicaceae, but also compared with the Hippocastanaceae; Thiergart ascribed it to Castanopsis, Thomson originally thought of Cyrilla, but later believed it to be Castanea pollen, whereas the reviewer dared not go further than to call it castaneoid. This example, which could be extended with several others, clearly indicates the difficulties that one would be confronted with, when reading about palynological studies carried out in that area, if no organ taxa would have been used. K.E. Lohman contributed an article on the stratigraphical and paleoecological significance of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic diatoms of California and Nevada. Of more general interest is W.R. Evitt's review of dinoflagellates and their use in petroleum geology, a most promising new direction of micropaleontological research. In his paper "Applied Paleozoic palynology", opening the second part of the book, R.M. Kosanke collected a number of data from some of the localities, from which Paleozoic material had been palynologically investigated, in order to show that gradually a stage has been reached when the knowledge about stratigraphical distribution of many taxa is of potential value in interregional and intercontinental correlations. Perhaps, however, separate range zones of guide fossils are required when comparing samples representing different depositional environments. Next are three more local contributions: on the Paleozoic of Libya, by J.L. Wray; on Permian evaporites in Kansas by B.L. Shaffer, and on subsurface data from the Permian-Jurassic of the Morondava Basin in Madagascar, by B. de Jekhowsky and N. Goubin. Three papers dealing with the stratigraphical succession at or near the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in North America (L.E. Stover, C.F. Upshaw, K.R. Newman) are preceded by R.A. Couper's valuable article on world-wide data that are of value in approximate spore-pollen correlation of Cretaceous rocks of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Very interesting is J.M. Schopf's contribution "Russian palynology today". In 1959, there were more than 150 palynological laboratories in the Soviet Union, with a thousand active palynologists. By 1965, the number of palynologists there seems to have roughly doubled. More than one-third of the world literature on palynology is written in the Russian language. All this is enough reason for palynologists in other countries to inform themselves of what is going on in their professional field in that part of the world. A. A. MANTEN (Utrecht)
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatol.,PalaeoecoL, 1 (1965) 333-344
Book Review Palynology in Oil Exploration. A. T. CROSS (Editor). A symposium sponsored by the research committee of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, S.E.P.M., Tulsa, Okla., 1964, 200 pp. Shortly after World War II the petroleum industry discovered the value of palynology in various geological aspects of petroleum exploration. This has greatly stimulated the development of palynology, with most of the major oil companies now employing palynologists. Whenever large groups of scientists have common interests, they organise symposia and other kinds of meetings. Consequently, a symposium on the role of palynology in modern oil exploration also became inevitable. The papers presented at the first symposium on the subject, held in San Francisco, Calif., March 26-27, 1962, are now available in book form. The proceedings fall into two parts, part I: Palynology - Principles, part II: Palynology - Applied. There is no full coverage of the subjects, contributions of general importance being included together with more local studies; the latter especially dominating part II. The stratigraphical significance of palynological research is treated more extensively than the paleoecological aspects. In the first part of the book the Editor presents an introductory paper on plant microfossils and geology. This is followed by a short but useful paper by M.F. Glaessner, which deals with palynology in relation to other micropaleontological methods, emphasizing the need for integration and cooperation in paleontology and stratigraphy. A good follow-up to this article is R.H. Tschudy's paper on the solution of time-stratigraphic problems with the aid of palynology and it contains stimulating sections on what the palynologist can do in this respect and how he must approach the problems. J.M. Schopfpresents an extensive review on practical problems and principles for geological use and study of plant microfossils, the methodological part being an excellent introduction to the subject. When considering the subject of classification a preference for a natural phylogenetic system is apparent, but justice is also done to artificial systems such as Tschudy's symbolic coding system. The reviewer wishes to point out that, in the present stage of study, for pre-Quaternary plant microfossils the use of an artificial system has evident advantages. For several sporomorphae it can not or can only vaguely be determined to which taxon they belong. Using an artificial system with well defined "taxa" implies that, with increasing knowledge on the relationships of the fossil remains, the results of countings can be easily transferred into terms of natural botanical taxa, and the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatol.,Palaeoecol., 1 (1965)333-334
334
BOOK REVIEW
interpretation can be currently adapted when necessary. If natural taxonomic units are used for the original counting, such later reinterpretations might be excluded; moreover it could lead to great confusion, as the following example illustrates: the organ species Tricolporopollenites cingulum non ssp. fusus, which occurs in the Tertiary of the Lower Rhine area, was originally referred by Potoni6, with much reserve, to the Punicaceae, but also compared with the Hippocastanaceae; Thiergart ascribed it to Castanopsis, Thomson originally thought of Cyrilla, but later believed it to be Castanea pollen, whereas the reviewer dared not go further than to call it castaneoid. This example, which could be extended with several others, clearly indicates the difficulties that one would be confronted with, when reading about palynological studies carried out in that area, if no organ taxa would have been used. K.E. Lohman contributed an article on the stratigraphical and paleoecological significance of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic diatoms of California and Nevada. Of more general interest is W.R. Evitt's review of dinoflagellates and their use in petroleum geology, a most promising new direction of micropaleontological research. In his paper "Applied Paleozoic palynology", opening the second part of the book, R.M. Kosanke collected a number of data from some of the localities, from which Paleozoic material had been palynologically investigated, in order to show that gradually a stage has been reached when the knowledge about stratigraphical distribution of many taxa is of potential value in interregional and intercontinental correlations. Perhaps, however, separate range zones of guide fossils are required when comparing samples representing different depositional environments. Next are three more local contributions: on the Paleozoic of Libya, by J.L. Wray; on Permian evaporites in Kansas by B.L. Shaffer, and on subsurface data from the Permian-Jurassic of the Morondava Basin in Madagascar, by B. de Jekhowsky and N. Goubin. Three papers dealing with the stratigraphical succession at or near the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in North America (L.E. Stover, C.F. Upshaw, K.R. Newman) are preceded by R.A. Couper's valuable article on world-wide data that are of value in approximate spore-pollen correlation of Cretaceous rocks of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Very interesting is J.M. Schopf's contribution "Russian palynology today". In 1959, there were more than 150 palynological laboratories in the Soviet Union, with a thousand active palynologists. By 1965, the number of palynologists there seems to have roughly doubled. More than one-third of the world literature on palynology is written in the Russian language. All this is enough reason for palynologists in other countries to inform themselves of what is going on in their professional field in that part of the world. A. A. MANTEN (Utrecht)
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatol.,PalaeoecoL, 1 (1965) 333-344