AG Mikropaläontologie - Paläozeanographie

The work focused on the time interval 54-50 Ma, the acme of the early Cenozoic warmth. Specifically the analysis was performed on 3 time slices: 54, 52 and 50 Ma.

Planktonic foraminifera were isolated and identified at the species level counting an average of 600 specimens per sample in the size fraction >150 μm.

The MICRO2MACRO dataset now consists of over 11000 specimens counted, stored and identified as belonging to 55 different species from a total of 8 sites spanning tropical to polar latitudes.

The MICRO2MACRO dataset has been used to calculate diversity metrics for the early Eocene Ocean (species richness, diversity, dissimilarity) to compare them with those from the moderns. Furthermore, we compared the new dataset with sea surface temperature (SST) data obtained from climate model simulations for the early Eocene derived from the DeepMIP project https://data.deepmip.org/.

MICRO2MACRO study sites over a map showing early Eocene annual mean temperatures from the CESM1.2 CAM climate model simulation at 1680 ppm atmospheric CO ₂ (Steing et al., 2024). The study locations are a combination of DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Project), ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) and IODP (International Discovery Program) sites https://www.iodp.org/.

Cartoon showing the relationship between species richness, latitude and SST in the early Eocene as reconstructed by the MICRO2MACRO project.