The role of micropaleontology is expanding as need for more sophisticated exploration techniques increases. In addition to age dating and correlation, micropaleontology now provides geologists with paleoenvironmental and paleobathymetric maps to locate depocenters, predict occurrences and trends of reservoir facies, determine shore-shelf-slope relation, and establish times and location of structural growth. Faunal assemblages provide clues to unconformities, faults, missing sections, and other events otherwise not readily recognized.

Although knowledge and application of microfossils have expanded greatly in recent years, frontiers for research are numerous and challenging. Gaps still exist in our understanding of many fossils. A useful synthesis of what is known about particular groups often is lacking. Environmental controls, the significance of the rare event, and the impact of worldwide geologic events on faunas are not completely understood. Better preparation techniques and more powerful tools such as the scanning electron microscope open new vistas for analysis and understanding. EDP provides a major challenge, both in speeding the work of stratigraphers and in bringing together for their use the vast storehouse of knowledge already existing. Micropaleontology will play an increasingly important role in exp oration as research resolves these challenges.

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