Evolutionary significance[edit]
Dying planktonic Foraminifera continuously rain down on the sea floor in vast numbers, their mineralized tests preserved as fossils in the accumulating sediment. Beginning in the 1960s, and largely under the auspices of the Deep Sea Drilling, Ocean Drilling, and International Ocean Drilling Programmes, as well as for the purposes of oil exploration, advanced deep-sea drilling techniques have been bringing up sediment cores bearing Foraminifera fossils.[26] The effectively unlimited supply of these fossil tests and the relatively high-precision age-control models available for cores has produced an exceptionally high-quality planktonic Foraminifera fossil record dating back to the mid-Jurassic, and presents an unparalleled record for scientists testing and documenting the evolutionary process.[26] The exceptional quality of the fossil record has allowed an impressively detailed picture of species inter-relationships to be developed on the basis of fossils, in many cases subsequently validated independently through molecular genetic studies on extant specimens[27] Larger benthic Foraminifera with complex shell structure react in a highly specific manner to the different benthic environments and, therefore, the composition of the assemblages and the distribution patterns of particular species reflect simultaneously bottom types and the light gradient. In the course of Earth history, larger Foraminifera are replaced frequently. In particular, associations of Foraminifera characterizing particular shallow water facies types are dying out and are replaced after a certain time interval by new associations with the same structure of shell morphology, emerging from a new evolutionary process of adaptation. These evolutionary processes make the larger Foraminifera useful as index fossils for the Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Cenozoic.