Plain Language Summary

Benthic foraminifers play a central role in deep-sea paleoceanographical research because of their wide geographic distribution, their abundance in Cretaceous to Recent deep-sea sediments and because of their utility as indicators of ancient environmental conditions. Nevertheless, knowledge of characteristic patterns and limits of morphological variation for many deep-sea benthic foraminiferal species are not well known. In particular, the lack of adequate illustration and up-to-date description of these species often limits or renders inaccurate studies that use deep-sea benthic foraminiferal data. In order to redress this situation we have re-illustrated and redescribed 36 common, deep-sea benthic foraminiferal species from Cretaceous through Recent sediments drawn from the collections of The Natural History Museum, London, the Smithsonian Institution and Krakow University. The illustrations contained herein are true-colour, composite digital images that provide the best single representation of what the specimen actually looks like under microscopic examination. The taxonomic revision represent syntheses based on over 100 articles, books, and reviews, plus the author's own experience. A taxonomic key to all species is also provided to facilitate rapid, accurate, and objective species-level identification.