Hochstetter’s fossil foraminiferal collections on the Novara Expedition, 1857–1859

Abstract

Ferdinand Hochstetter was the geologist on the Austrian trans-global Novara Expedition (1857–1859). During these travels he collected sedimentary rock samples from three places that he recognised in the field to have rich foraminiferal faunas and on his return to Austria they were studied by three foraminiferal specialists. Conrad Schwager (1866) described 97 new species (79 currently accepted) from a Pliocene lower bathyal-abyssal fauna from Car Nicobar, India. This was the earliest description of cosmopolitan, deep-water Neogene foraminiferal species and thus includes descriptions of many species widely recognised today such as Lobatula wuellerstorfi, Cibicidoides cicatricosus, Neogloboquadrina conglomerata, Pyrgo murrhina and many of the more common elongate taxa that became extinct during the Last Global extinction in the Mid Pleistocene Climate Transition. Felix Karrer (1864) and Guido Stache (1864) described 19 foraminiferal species (16 currently accepted) from the early Miocene and 126 species (50 currently accepted) from the Oligocene of the North Island of New Zealand, respectively. Among the species described from Hochstetter’s collections are the type species of 15 genera that are accepted today. Three species have been named hochstetteri from these localities. Because of their significance, all these new species from New Zealand and India were revised and typified in monographs by Hornibrook (1971) and Srinivasan & Sharma (1980), respectively.