Welcome to Nummulites.net
A famous quip of oil industry geophysicists is that sedimentary geology can be reduced to one line; dirt goes downhill, and reefs grow on the highs.
The topology and geometry of stratigraphic units is one of the most important aspects of sedimentary geology, and therefore of hydrocarbon exploration. As a result the oil industry has been very active in high-tech geophysical mapping in the last few decades. Unfortunately the same resources have not been given to low-tech, traditional geological methods (rock description & related subjects). As a result, there has been commercial success from better mapping in many producing basins, but the development of new play types, and particularly the interpretation of poor seismic from complex areas (which requires a lot of geological control) has lagged behind.
Many of the geology reports on this site try to show that better application of basic geological skills could be the key to finding significant discoveries in overlooked areas. Not only is such work very cost-effective, but it can also find exploration plays outside the normal cycle (and hype) of block bid-rounds.
A bias towards micropalaeontology on this site hopes to show that foraminifera have a future in both applied stratigraphy, as well as evolutionary studies. They are a major, extant group of protozoa that reflect different evolutionary pressures to metazoa. Foraminifera are outstanding for evolutionary studies as they have both complex morphologies and an abundant fossil record. This allows detailed work to check hypotheses, thereby avoiding the problem plainly summarised by Steve Jones that:
Evolution is to allegory as statues are to birdshit. Jones, 1999
This web-site is therefore a notebook that attempts to clean up a little of the birdshit on evolutionary and biostratigraphic ideas about forams, and some of the allegorical bull about Indo-Pacific petroleum geology.
Copyright
The images and text on this site are the property of the Author. However, permission is granted for their use for education or illustration in research as long as acknowledgement is given.