Special Issue: The Contribution of Fossils to Chronostratigraphy, 150 Years after Albert Oppel

The 2nd International Symposium on Stratigraphy, STRATI 2015, held in Graz, Austria in July 2015 provided
the opportunity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the death of one of the most prominent scientists in the history of geology, Albert Oppel (1831–65), a specialist on Jurassic ammonoids who is widely considered as the father of modern bio- and chronostratigraphy. Surprisingly, despite the rich and varied programme of international symposia and workshops running at that time and devoted to different aspects of palaeontology and sedimentary geology, this important anniversary went apparently unnoticed and no special events were scheduled. At the end of 2014, we decided therefore to submit to the Organizing Committee of STRATI 2015 a proposal for a special session devoted to Oppel and to a discussion of the importance of fossils for dating and correlating of sedimentary rocks. The session was accepted and the publication of selected papers resulting from it was welcomed and encouraged by the editors of Lethaia.
The invited contributions were deliberately wide-ranging in order to bring together apparently unrelated lines to assess the significance of diverse fossil groups through a long time span and to explore their potential
for high-resolution stratigraphy and their modern contribution to chronostratigraphy. Our invitation was
accepted by many specialists working on different fossil groups, representing the entire Phanerozoic stratigraphical record. The Oppel session was the most successful of the Graz Symposium both in terms of
contributions and public attendance. It attracted 25 participants from14 countries of all continents. Several
speakers accepted our further invitation to contribute to this Thematic Issue. In the following sections, we
briefly offer a starting point focusing on the extraordinary profile of Albert Oppel and present later the general framework of the Oppel Thematic Issue.