Mastigophora

Wellington, New Zealand

The evolution of calcareous dinoflagellate communities has been investigated for the latest Cretaceous to earliest Neogene interval of the mid-latitude South Atlantic. In doing so, the response of calcareous dinoflagellates to Cenozoic climatic change has been addressed for the first time. Trends in species composition and distribution patterns of wall types indicate significant changes which correlate with major palaeoenvironmental modifications. A first major shift concerning the relative abundance of species and wall types occurred across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.

C37-C39 long-chain unsaturated ketones (alkenones) and alkenes were identified in samples of particulate organic matter obtained from surface waters spanning the temperature range -0.7-12.2?C in the Southern Ocean south of Australia. The carbon number distribution indicates that these compounds are derived from the prymnesiophyte alga Emiliania huxleyi which is the predominant coccolithophorid in these waters.

To investigate the potential use of the stable isotope composition of the vegetative cysts of the photosynthetic dinoflagellate Thoracosphaera heimii for quantitative palaeotemperature reconstructions a method has been developed to purify T. heimii cysts from sediment samples. Stable oxygen and carbon isotopes have been measured on T. heimii cysts from 21 surface sediment samples from the equatorial Atlantic and South Atlantic Oceans.

An overview is presented of the current state of knowledge on paleo-ecological aspects of calcareous dinoflagellate resting cysts. Apart from literature-based information, a discussion of new results is also provided from Equatorial Atlantic surface plankton samples, surface sediment samples and Late Quaternary sediments from two gravity cores. With the aid of redundancy analysis statistics, variations in the calcareous cyst content of both cores are correlated to variations in total organic carbon (TOC).

A study of organic biomarker compounds which could serve as tracers of terrigenous and marine sedimentary organic matter sources was performed on samples from a 208.7 m hydraulic piston core hole (DSDP Hole 619) from the hemipelagic Pigmy Basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Organic carbon-normalized concentrations of total long chain (C37-C39) alkenones and some individual C27-C29 desmethyl sterols were determined to be useful proportional indicators (tracers) of preserved marine and terrigenous organic carbon, respectively.

The climatic deterioration related to the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciations (circa 2.52 Ma BP) must have lead to reorganization and relocation of species associations and may have enhanced species turnover. The present study investigates how this deterioration affects the dinoflagellate cyst and acritarch assemblages from two locations, DSDP Site 607 (North Atlantic) and the Singa section (southern Italy).

The sedimentary record of a ratio (UK37) of long chain (C37) unsaturated alkenones is a useful indicator of glacial-interglacial climatic change in the Late Quaternary northern Gulf of Mexico where a planktonic foraminiferal delta18O-CaCO3 record is complicated by meltwater and/or fluvial events (Williams and Kohl, 1986, doi:10.2973/dsdp.proc.96.137.1986).

Alkenone-based Cenozoic records of the partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) are founded on the carbon isotope fractionation that occurred during marine photosynthesis (epsilon [p37:2]). However, the magnitude of epsilon [p37:2] is also influenced by phytoplankton cell size - a consideration lacking in previous alkenone-based CO2 estimates.

In order to determine the possible usefulness of stable isotope measurements on calcareous dinoflagellate cysts for paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic studies, we have produced oxygen and carbon isotope records of the species Pirumella krasheninnikovii (Bolli, H.M., 1974. Jurassic and Cretaceous Calcisphaerulidae from DSDP Leg 27, eastern Indian Ocean.