Ostracods: Messengers from the Past

Ostracods are small, microscopic, bivalved crustaceans, and this is an autobiographical account of my encounters with fossil benthic marine post-Palaeozoic species. I studied their taxonomy and stratigraphical and geographical distributions for sixty years (1964-2024), and did this mainly in tandem with my marine geological and palaeo-oceanographical explorations. Over the course of my journey through the byways of ostracodology, these fossils have provided me with evidence to explore several topics of broad geological interest. Benthic ostracods are excellent indicators of palaeo-environmental conditions on the sea floor and the overlying oceanic water-masses. Interpreting the messages they carry to us from the past was a task on which I spent much of my research career: documenting the major climatic and plate-tectonic changes the ostracod faunas suggested. Although I started my ostracod studies in the North Sea, my main centres of interest were the shelf and deep-seas around southern Africa, which, particularly in the Cretaceous, were crucibles of taxonomic innovation, with genera and species spreading to the shelf seas of Southern Gondwanaland, and the deep basins of the South Atlantic, Indian and Southern oceans: a veritable crossroads of the southern seas. It was a forever changing kaleidoscope of data and ideas with fellow-workers interested in these areas: Argentina, Brazil, East Africa, India, Australasia and Antarctica. It has been a journey of constant fascination and surprises.