Benthic foraminifera have been used for stratigraphic purposes almost since they began to be studied systematically. Already around the middle of the nineteenth Century, A. E. Reuss realised the stratigraphic value of benthic foraminifera. However, the real breakthrough in the application of foraminifera to biostratigraphy – at the time almost exclusively benthic foraminifera – began with the requirements of the oil industry for dating well sections and comparing them with the strata seen on surface. One of the first areas to use the tool was the Gulf Coast region of the United States and Mexico, above all by the great pioneer in promoting the stratigraphic application of foraminifera, Joseph A. Cushman. His textbook and that by J. J. Galloway were the first modern comprehensive references on the subject. Other significant contributors in this area were Helen J. Plummer, M. P. White, W. L. F. Nuttall and R. W. Barker. The use of benthic foraminifera in stratigraphy spread rapidly, mainly through Cushman and his co-authors, to the Caribbean (mainly Trinidad), then to California (R. M. Kleinpell, V. S. Mallory) and Venezuela (A. Senn). By the middle nineteen-thirties, foraminifera – still almost exclusively benthic forms – were the major microfossil group used worldwide in the micropaleontological laboratories of the oil industry.

Cretaceous and Tertiary planktic foraminifera, that had previously been largely ignored, gradually began to attract more attention from about the mid-nineteen- thirties but this was mainly in sediments where benthic forms were poorly represented. Early studies included those on the Globotruncanids of the Alpine-Mediterranean area followed by investigations on the Tertiary planktics, first in the North Caucasus region but then mainly in Trinidad.