Episodic Ice-Free Arctic Ocean in Pliocene and Pleistocene Time: Calcareous Nannofossil Evidence
Abstract
Today's ice cover (2 to 4 meters thick) over the Arctic Ocean provides a shadow that prevents coccolithophorids (photosynthetic, planktonic algae) from living there. Sparse, low-diversity, but indigenous coccolith assemblages in late Pliocene to mid-Pleistocene (but not Holocene) sediments imply deep penetrating warm currents or an ice-free Arctic Ocean, or both, as those layers were being deposited.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- October 1980
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.210.4467.323
- Bibcode:
- 1980Sci...210..323W