CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The Cenozoic rocks of Argentina contain a rich, exceptionally well preserved and remarkable diverse marine and continental invertebrate fauna. The main goal of the present synthesis consists in revealing the continuous progress of the scientific research performed during the last 50 years dealing with these assemblages. Initial studies of microfaunas were carried out between the 50´ and 60´ and since then the nterest for forams and ostracods experimented a marked increase among workers. Analysis of these faunas not onlyimproved the knowledge of their taxonomic composition, provided a proper frame for biostratigraphic works for accurating age assignments of Argentinean Cenozoic strata, but also became a new source of data to be used in paleoenvironmental interpretations. Although known since the middle part of the XIX century, during the last five decades, macroinvertebrates have been matter of a renewed interest by paleontologists.Being the most abundant, the Tertiary marine shallow-water molluscs are the group that most noticeable drew the attention of researchers, and a large part of the investigations focused to clarify systematic aspects taht led to meaningful comparisons with other Southern Hemisphere and Caribbean assemblages. Nevertheless, though a large amount of work has been already done, these assemblages are in need of a comprehensive revision in order to accomplish the proper information to amke any final inferences involving origin of these faunas, as well astheir biogeographic and plaeoclimatic implications. several Tertiary groups (braquipods, equinoids, bryozoans and coralls) still remains poorly understood, and only arthoropodswere subject of study by scientits during this last decade. By de way, cenozoic contnental molluscs have been recently receiving attention after that many years elapsed since the pioneer studies.