Paleoecology of Extinct Dinoflagellate Cysts

In this article, we will discuss Paleoecology of Extinct Dinoflagellate Cysts. So, let’s get started.

Paleoecology of Extinct Dinoflagellate Cysts

Dinocysts are increasingly used for paleoenvironmental reconstructions (Pross and Brinkhuis, 2005) but the definition of ecological preferences of extinct species remains a challenge. Various combinations of actuo-paleontological, empirical, and statistical approaches including comparison with the morphology and ecology of co-occurring extant genera and species, the identification of latitudinal and onshore-
offshore gradients from paleobiogeographic data, the interpretation of statistical analyses (e.g., correspondence analysis) on dinocyst distribution in relation to independent paleoenvironmental information, and the relation between dinocyst assemblages and geochemical proxies for water mass properties may yield qualitative and quantitative ecological information on, e.g., temperature, salinity, onshore-offshore gradients, bottom water oxygenation, and productivity (e.g., Versteegh and Zonneveld, 1994; Pross and Brinkhuis, 2005; De Schepper et al., 2011; Bijl et al., 2011; Masure et al., 2013; Schreck and Matthiessen, 2013). These ecological parameters are qualitatively known for some extinct species, groups of taxa or
complexes of genera (e.g., Pross and Brinkhuis, 2005), and the correlation of species abundance to geochemical proxies (e.g., Mg/Ca temperatures on co-occurring planktonic foraminifera, De Schepper et al., 2011) is promising for providing quantitative data.