Mesozoic radiolarians from the European Platform: a review

This paper is primarily concerned with providing an overview of studies on Mesozoic radiolarians and presents a general background of living radiolarians and the different stages they go through (the filters) from their state as plankton to their state as fossils, as geologists find them in rocks. This is followed by a review of the main publications documenting radiolarians world-wide since their discovery. The main purpose of this paper is to present to westerners the various work related to the eastern European platform countries (European part of the former Soviet Union) as the majority of these papers are written in languages unfamiliar to most geologists. We have therefore chosen to present here their historical background, and their location, as precisely as possible, in order to allow further comparisons.