Foraminifera in Cenozoic Paleoenvironments

INTRODUCTION Microfossilsaregenerallythemostversatileand “useful”offossilsforbothcorrelationandagedeter minationandpaleoenvironmentalanalysis.Among microfossilstheforaminiferaarepre eminent(Fig. 1).Wefindinthesamesample—beitoutcropor subsurface,onshor…

Foraminifera in Cenozoic Paleoenvironments

Paleontologists search the fossil record for evidence of age, ancient environments, phylogenetic reconstructions and ancient communities. Cenozoic foraminifera preserve evidence for all of these simultaneously from the water column and from at, above and below the sediment/water interface. As our understanding of foraminiferal assemblages and their place in the strata (biofacies) becomes more sophisticated, so are foraminiferal biofacies challenged to contribute to more subtle problems in Cenozoic earth and life history. Progress is described as a series of five "integrations". (Ⅰ) The quantification of foraminiferal biofacies was an advance on simple presences and absences of species meeting such questions as marine or nonmarine, or shallow or deep. (Ⅱ) Foraminiferal shells carry geochemical signals especially isotopes of oxygen (temperature, ice volume), carbon (nutrition and the carbon cycle), and strontium (seawater ratios through time). (Ⅲ) From modern foraminiferal biology we have lifestyle insights leading to a model of oceans and paleo-oceans called the trophic resource continuum, a valuable way into greenhouse-icehouse comparisons and contrasts. (Ⅳ) Biofacies changes in space and time are sometimes abrupt with little evidence of diachrony, and sometimes gradual. These patterns are clarified in the context of sequence stratigraphy (which they enrich in turn). (Ⅴ) The paleobiological counterpart of sequence stratigraphy is evolutionary paleoecology, reconstructing communities in deep time. The foraminifera are perfectly suited to investigate the possibility (or likelihood) that global environmental shifts have controlled community turnover in the pelagic, neritic and terrestrial realms.