Pacific Miocene carbon isotope stratigraphy using benthic foraminifera

Seven Miocene Pacific Ocean Deep Sea Drilling Project sites from four different water masses (planktonic foraminiferal biogeographic regions) have been correlated using 18 prominent carbon isotopic events defined in the benthic foraminiferal δ¹³C records in DSDP Site 289. The correlations are based on the assumption that there are global or at least Pacific-wide controls on the δ¹³C of deep-water HCO₃^?. Each of the individual δ¹³C records is correlated to Site 289 based on the shape of the curves in a manner analogous to that used to correlate sea-floor magnetic anomaly patterns.The results of this correlation experiment confirm that planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy and carbon isotopic stratigraphy are consistent within the tropical surface water mass and precise to ±100,000 years. Correlations between surface water masses suggest that the precision of foraminiferal biostratigraphy is on the average less than ±200,000 years due to the lack of cosmopolitan marker species and diachronism of species occurrences. Carbon isotope stratigraphy used in conjunction with biostratigraphy has the potential to provide an easily utilized, globally applicable, correlation tool (with an interregional precision of ±100,000 years or better) as more continuous and undisturbed deep-sea sections become available as a result of the Hydraulic Piston Coring Program.