Calcareous Dinoflagellates Through the Messinian Salinity Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean Pissouri Basin; Cyprus
Abstract
The extent to which the Messinian Salinity Crisis modified the initially Tethyan, oceanic to neritic Eastern Mediterranean phytoplankton community has been investigated by monitoring the fate of calcareous dinoflagellate cyst assemblages prior, during and after the Salinity Crisis in the Pissouri Section (Cyprus). A rich, but low diversity open oceanic assemblage, dominated by Calciodinellum albatrosianum, occurs during the Tortonian and lower Messinian. The upper Messinian sediments yield only few cysts but the assemblage is much more diverse, reflecting more neritic and euryhaline conditions. The lower Pliocene sediments reflect the return to open oceanic conditions, the assemblages are again rich in cysts and have a low diversity. However, in contrast to the C. albatrosianum-dominated pre-Messinian sediments, Leonella granifera dominates the Pliocene associations. Apart from this shift in dominance, the transition to the Pliocene is furthermore marked by the first appearance of C. levantinum and C. elongatum, which must have immigrated from the Atlantic. Probably Lebesphaera urania, a postulated remnant of the Tethyan Ocean, survived the Salinity Crisis in as yet unidentified marine refuges in the Mediterranean itself.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2005
- Bibcode:
- 2005AGUFMPP11B1459B
- Keywords:
-
- 3030 Micropaleontology (0459;
- 4944);
- 4944 Micropaleontology (0459;
- 3030);
- 4950 Paleoecology