A review of calcareous nannofossil astrobiochronology encompassing the past 25 million years☆
Introduction
The age control in marine sediments has come a long way since the first biostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic records were combined to achieve a better understanding of age/depth relationships in deep-sea cores (Harrison and Funnell, 1964; Harrison, 1966; Opdyke et al., 1966). In the three decades following the middle 1960s, magnetobiochronology was at the centre in the series of marine Cenozoic timescales developed by Berggren et al. (1995), culminating in the 1995 scale. In that scale, Cenozoic chrons/subchrons vary in duration from 0.01 to 3.(01) million years, with an average time distance between two successive chron/subchron boundaries of 0.38 million years. This number thus represents an average of the chronologic resolution that can be reached with the Cenozoic geomagnetic timescale.
A major advance in marine stratigraphy occurred when Shackleton and Opdyke (1973) placed the “established oxygen isotope stratigraphy within the palaeomagnetic framework”, which enabled them to date boundaries of 22 stages, using Emiliani, 1955, Emiliani, 1966 stage nomenclature, in core V28–238 from the Ontong-Java Plateau. Oxygen isotope stratigraphy was thus used to subdivide time within the Brunhes and late Matuyama chrons, although the age calibration of this subdivision still relied on linear interpolation between the core top (Holocene) and the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary. A truly revolutionary move forward with respect to dating of marine sediments occurred with the landmark publication of Hays et al. (1976). They demonstrated, for the first time, that different properties in deep-sea sediments unambiguously preserved a record of Milankovitch cyclicity. This was not only a breakthrough per se, but also opened the possibility of using orbital cycles as an independent means of (absolute) geological dating of sediments and sedimentary rocks. This paper thus laid the foundation for the development of astrochronology and for subdividing geologic time within single geomagnetic polarity zones. The resolution offered by astrochronology is roughly one order of magnitude better than the Cenozoic geomagnetic polarity timescale, on the 104 rather than the 105 year scale.
In the middle 1970s, when the Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton paper was published, deep-sea cores being relatively undisturbed by the coring process were still restricted to piston cores, implying that studies of orbital-induced variability in deep-sea sediments by-and-large were limited to Pleistocene records, such as that of Thierstein et al. (1977). They employed Oxygen Isotope Stages to date a series of Pleistocene calcareous nannofossil events, thereby taking an important first step towards astrobiochronology. A new tool was at hand to improve biochronologic resolution within magnetochrons having single polarity directions. Thierstein and others were innovative also in presenting abundance plots together with isotope data and in using an unconventional biohorizon based on census data, the cross-over in dominance between two species.
In the middle 1970s, the coring techniques employed by the Deep-Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) did not yet provide core material of sufficiently good quality to permit orbital studies of longer time intervals because such studies require undisturbed core material and complete recovery. DSDP sediment cores were often severely disturbed by the coring process and recovery was generally closer to 50% than 100%. When DSDP developed the Hydraulic Piston Corer (see cover photo of JOIDES Journal, vol. V, no. 2, 1979), both core quality and core recovery were fundamentally improved. Still, a new drilling strategy was adopted in order to generate complete and undisturbed deep-sea sediment sequences. This strategy involved multiple penetration of the sediment column at a given drilling site location. The different holes were located a few tens of meters from each other. Similarly, core boundaries in the different holes were vertically offset by a few meters. From such multiply penetrated sediment sections, a composite complete sediment sequence was generated that permitted continuous high-resolution sampling (Ruddiman et al., 1987). Once this deep-sea coring strategy was formulated, the critical prerequisites were in place to permit the extension of the astro(bio)chronologic timescale beyond the Pleistocene realm.
In the years following the Hays et al. (1976) paper, much effort was invested in demonstrating the influence of orbital forcing in marine as well as in non-marine records (e.g., Berger et al., 1982). But there was yet no strong push within the marine biostratigraphy community to take advantage of the resolution offered by astrochronology to improve age estimates of biostratigraphic datums. Biostratigraphy still relied chiefly on the range-chart method, presenting qualitative information using sample spacing intervals of meters rather than centimeters. But when Raymo et al. (1989) refined the age estimates of two Pliocene calcareous nannofossil and two planktic foraminiferal biohorizons using the tuned δ18O record of DSDP Site 607 in the mid-latitude North Atlantic, another important step was taken towards astrobiochronology.
Concomitantly, Shackleton and Hall (1989) and Shackleton et al. (1990) established a Pleistocene and late Pliocene oxygen isotope stratigraphy at Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 677 from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, in which a handful of nannofossil, foraminiferal and radiolarian biohorizons were calibrated to astrochronologically dated Oxygen Isotope Stages. The 1990 paper presented the first revision of age estimates of (Pleistocene) geomagnetic polarity boundaries using astronomically tuned δ18O data, thereby firmly establishing astronomical tuning as an independent, and important additional dating tool.
The first comprehensive attempt to directly calibrate a larger suite of Plio-Pleistocene calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphic events to the astrochronologic timescale, via oxygen isotope stratigraphy, was made in two papers published 4 months apart in Paleoceanography. Wei (1993) presented data in range-chart format from several DSDP and ODP sites including Sites 607 and 677. Shortly afterwards, Raffi et al. (1993) also focussed on these two sites. The two studies differed in approach, qualitative (Wei) versus quantitative (Raffi), and sample intervals. Wei's samples in Site 677 were spaced an average 144 cm apart. Raffi et al. consistently used a sample spacing interval that was (about) ten times shorter in Sites 607 and 677, which yielded more precise determinations of the depth, and thus age, uncertainties of the biohorizons.
In the early 1990s, a group of Dutch scientists began their series of papers on astronomical calibration of Neogene cyclical lithologic variations in the Mediterranean area. In the early publications (e.g., Hilgen, 1991a, Hilgen, 1991b; Langereis and Hilgen, 1991; Lourens et al., 1992), they only calibrated planktic foraminiferal datums, but subsequently also calcareous nannofossils were included. This group of scientists has continued to use cyclic variations in sediment lithology to establish an astrochronologic timescale from a middle latitude setting in Mediterranean sections. Their Mediterranean reference records are anchored in the present and extend deep into the Miocene (Hilgen et al., 2003). In the low latitudes, astrobiochronologic estimates have been pushed back into the Miocene (ODP Leg 138) and subsequently into the Oligocene (ODP Leg 154) (Shackleton et al., 1995a, Shackleton et al., 1995b, Shackleton et al., 1999).
But despite these efforts, there are still relatively few astrochronologically tuned sections available that are suitable for calibration of evolutionary appearances, extinctions, or other useful biohorizons. And among these sections, even fewer have been employed to establish biostratigraphies that combine census data with the use of the smallest meaningful sample interval for determination of the biohorizons.
Astrobiochronologic data represent a key component in age model reconstructions, one of the corner-stones of paleoceanography, and has huge potential to aid determinations of the degree of synchrony of biohorizons over paleogeographic distance. In this review paper, we aim to provide an overview of calcareous nannofossil astrobiochronology encompassing the past 25 million years, with particular emphasis on the relative position of biostratigraphic markers with respect to the astronomically calibrated ages of magnetic reversals and isotope stratigraphies, which allow the extrapolation of these datum events to other localities.
Section snippets
Astronomical timescale
After Hays et al. (1976) demonstrated statistically that orbitally driven climatic variations are indeed recorded in undisturbed sedimentary deep-sea sequences, it became clear that a key to the success of this technique lies in finding continuous sediment records of high-enough sample resolution. If astronomical calculations could be constructed to a high-enough degree of accuracy, the medium-term dream could be one of an astronomically age-calibrated geological timescales that covers the
Biohorizons: which, where and some revised calibrations
The biohorizons considered here are employed in numerous biostratigraphic studies on calcareous nannofossils (Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4), and many occur in the zonations established from low-latitude deep-sea sediments (Bukry, 1973, Bukry, 1975, Bukry, 1978; Okada and Bukry, 1980) or in middle to low-latitude hemipelagic sediments (Martini, 1971). A fair number of auxiliary biohorizons, which are not used in the above “standard” zonations, are included as well because of their
Aknowledgments
Our research and most of the results reported here are based on samples provided by the Deep-Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under management of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI). Funding for I.R., E.F. and D.R. was from the Italian Murst-PRIN (national coordinator I. Premoli Silva). J.B. was supported by the Swedish Research Council. Many thanks to Stefano Castelli
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This paper is dedicated to Professor Sir Nicholas J. Shackleton for his pioneering and seminal work in developing the Astronomical Time Scale, and for his continuous enthusiastic support to our work. Nick had an immense influence for our current views on marine micropaleontology and paleoceanography.