California foraminiferal micropalaeontology

Foraminifera were of little interest in North America until 1923, when Joseph Cushman demonstrated how these microfossils could be used for subsurface geologic correlation. Word spread quickly throughout the oil industry and their sudden demand for foram workers prompted academia to provide the necessary training. For the next 60 years, industrial exploration and development played a major role in maintaining a large presence of foraminiferologists in California. Although the major oil companies employed most of them, a few found careers in the major universities or with the US Geological Survey. In the 1980s, the Californian oil industry became less reliant on biostratigraphy and the numbers of micropaleontologists rapidly declined. The heyday of foraminiferal micropaleontology had passed and by the time offshore exploration was abandoned in the early 1990s, few foraminiferologists remained in the state. Today only a handful of seasoned foraminiferologists can be found working in California.