Diatom Biostratigraphy and Paleoenvironmental History of Cape Roberts Projects Cores

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This award supports a project to charaaterize the diatom fossils in drill core recovered by the Cape Roberts Project (CRP). The CRP is a major program within the international Antarctic earth science community, designed to sample Antarctic continental margin strata of late Cretaceous through Paleogene age (30 million to 100 million years ago). Drilling operations will include continuous coring from a sea ice platform at four sites on the flank of the Victoria Land basin in the western Ross Sea, during two drilling seasons. This particular project involves initial field-based paleontologic analysis of siliceous microfossils in Cape Roberts cores. Core sections will be ferried to the Crary Science and Engineering Center for immediate analysis. Diatoms and other siliceous microfossils will provide rapid age and paleoenvironmental information during drilling operations. Each season will include preparation of a preliminary biostratigraphic/paleoenvironmental report based on siliceous microfossils. This report will become part of the CRP Initial Reports volume, which will include the preliminary results from other microfossil groups, lithostratigraphic, magnetostratigraphic, and other analyses. Analysis of diatoms and other siliceous microfossils in CRP cores will greatly aid in the development of an integrated biostratigraphy for this poorly-known interval in the southern high latitudes. Diatoms will provide evidence of envirolmental changes in water depth, primary productivity, presence/absence of sea ice, et cetera. CRP cores will provide an excellent opportunity to study adaptation of diatoms to strong polar seasonality and diatom evolution. They will also offer the possibility of gaining a bipolar perspective on Paleogene high latitude phytoplankton evolution, by integrating CRP studies with ongoing studies of Paleogene siliceous microfossils in Arctic strata (for example, Ocean Drilling Program Leg 151).