Micropaleontology....

What is micropaleontology? Perhaps, not so much people really know or understand about this term. How about people who has geology background? They might know this word.

As far as I concern, in Malaysia there are only two universities (UM n UKM) have conduct this course to their geology’s student, but unfortunately only for those who been chosen to Petroleum Geology Programmed. Lack of exposure of this course makes it unpopular among the student and the people around as well. Many people didn’t know what is the important of micropaleontology, but this thing, not happen in Oil and Gas Industries especially someone who involved in oil and gas exploration.

I will give a brief explanation about what is micropaleontology and how it been widely used in petroleum exploration.

Micropaleontology is a branch of geology which studies microfossil. Microfossils are fossils, generally not larger than four millimeters and only can be studied by using microscope. Every one must be familiar with the large fossil such as dinosaur, but here, we talk about very small fossil. Here are the several organisms that, when it preserved, it will be considered as microfossils.

Pollen and Spore (derived from Plant) – derived from continental environment
Foraminifera (Protist) – Sea to deep sea environment

Actually these organisms existed on the earth since million2 years ago. In oil and gas exploration, this kind of fossils is strongly used for dating the age of the rock formations that generate the petroleum and used to interpret the environment where the rock been deposited. From these fossils, we also can predict whether the rock formation is mature enough to generate petroleum and gas. In Malaysia, the age of the basin (the place where petroleum can be explored) is approximately 20-30 million year’s old.

This is just a brief explanation,

Reference:

Micropaleontology,

Micro-Very2 small,
Paleo-Ancient
Tology-Fossil study