Shallow water benthic foraminifera from the Polonez Cove Formation (lower Oligocene) of King George Island, West Antarctica

We present the first description of benthic foraminifera from the lower Oligocene of the Antarctic Peninsula sector (South Shetlands) of West Antarctica. The single assemblage was collected at several sites and has no modern Antarctic analogue. It is dominated by robust calcareous species and represents a fan-delta front system. The assemblage includes a group of the most morphologically conservative Antarctic foraminifera known from other Cenozoic neritic sites around Antarctica, indicating their presence since at least the Eocene. Despite including some characteristic taxa, e.g., Ammoelphidiella sp., it is difficult to correlate this assemblage with any particular interval of the Ross Sea record, mainly because of a strong taxonomic imprint of a shallow water environment.