Miocene climate variations — the marine and terrestrial biotic response during key periods.
Research subject — A stepwise, global cooling of the climate occurred during Miocene times. These punctuated cooling events are known as the Mi-events and lasted only for a few 100 k.y. The Mi-events had a drastic effect on marine primary producers and on terrestrial ecosystems.
The proposed research intends to elucidate on a very detailed level the tempo and mode of the effects of the global cooling events on an important marine primary producer such as dinoflagellates, and to assess to what degree the biotic responses in the terrestrial and marine realm are or are not in phase. The study areas are the Porcupine Basin (IODP Leg 307) off southwestern Ireland and the Ceara Rise off Brazil (ODP Leg 154). A very high sample resolution (10 k.y. and less) is intended. The micropaleontological data will be validated against biogeochemical proxies such as the TEX86 and the unsaturation index UK’37 (proxies for paleotemperatures) and the BIT index (a proxy for the relative amount of soil and marine organic matter input in the depositional area).
The research will be carried out at the Research Unit of Palaeontology at Ghent University, but the successful applicant will work in close collaboration with TNO (Utrecht, The Netherlands) for the pollen analysis and the Royal NIOZ (Texel, The Netherlands) for the biogeochemical analyses.
