Warm plankton soup and red herrings: calcareous nannoplankton cellular communities and the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

ABSTRACT: Past global warming events such as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM-56 Ma) are attributed to the release of vast amounts of carbon into the ocean, atmosphere and biosphere with recovery ascribed to a combination of silicate weathering and organic carbon burial. The phytoplanktonic nannoplankton are major contributors of organic and inorganic carbon but their role in this recovery process remains poorly understood and complicated by their contribution to marine calcification. Biocalcification is implicated not only in long-term carbon burial but also both short-term positive and negative climatic feedbacks associated with seawater buffering and responses to ocean acidification. Here, we use exceptional records of preserved fossil coccospheres to reconstruct cell size distribution

SUBMITTER: Gibbs SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6127380 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature