Late Cainozoic Ostracoda from Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 31(Site 296)

Eleven benthonic ostracod species belonging to eight genera were encountered in core samples ranging in age from the Pliocene to the Holocene of Site 296 of DSDP Leg 31. Almost all the modern descendants of the genera and known species in this study are abyssal inhabitants and their fossil records also originate from the deep-sea sediments in the world ocean during the Cainozoic. The discovery of deep-sea (psychrospheric) ostracods in the studied area indicates that during the Quaternary in the marginal northwestern Pacific, an abyssal depth existed probably as deep as that of the present day, but greater than that in the Pliocene.