Dinoflagellates: A new look at old bugs

Dinoflagellates are planktonic organisms that have left a fossil record of cysts since the Late Triassic. Like foraminifera, their great abundance in certain rocks and their small size have led to their use in subsurface stratigraphic studies, especially in relation to hydrocarbon exploration. This has resulted in an explosion of data in recent years. The development of databases such as PALYLIT (developed by several oil companies and the Geological Survey of Canada) has provided the impetus for refining biostratigraphic correlations and for pursuing some new and exciting research directions. PALYLIT contains information from more than 17 000 publications. Our plots of dinoflagellate species occurrences (diversities) through time are based on more than 52 000 biostratigraphic records retrieved from PALYLIT.