The Use of Fossil Micro-Organisms for the Study of Ancient Climates in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

该奖项支持一项研究，利用生物指标，即Beacon砂岩隐石器时代微生物殖民的化石记录和永久冻土中的微生物，重建麦克默多干燥山谷晚更新世晚期的古气候历史。这项工作将试图利用干旱山谷地区过去和现在发生的对气候敏感的生物指标和化石生物指标的分布情况，讨论南极冰盖的稳定论和动态论观点。具体地说，将分析来自灯塔砂岩和永久冻土岩芯的土壤中是否存在活微生物群和化石微生物群，这些微生物群的生存区域已知，或将通过绘制目前存在的分布图来确定。这些信息将与微生物活动引起的特征剥落模式(现代和化石)的分布相结合，以重建相对的年龄序列。永久冻土岩芯的沉积学将与微生物学和年代地层学数据相结合。绝对年表将通过碳14、热释光测年和宇宙源放射性核素分析(在适当情况下)提供。

This award supports a study to use biological indicators, namely fossil records of cryptoendolithic microbial colonization of Beacon sandstone and microorganisms in permafrost, to reconstruct paleoclimate history of the Late Plio-Pleistocene period in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The work will attempt to address the stabilist versus the dynamicist view of the Antarctic ice sheet using past and present occurences of distributions of climatically sensitive living and fossilized biological indicators in the Dry Valleys region. Specifically, soil derived from Beacon Sandstone and permafrost cores will be analyzed for the occurence of living and fossilized microbial groups whose viability zones are already known or will be determined by mapping the distribution of present occurences. This information will be integrated with the distribution of characteristic exfoliation patterns (recent and fossil) caused by microbial activity to reconstruct relative age sequences. The sedimentology of the permafrost cores will be characterized and integrated with microbiological and chronostratigraphic data. Absolute chronologies will be provided (where appropriate) by carbon-14, thermoluminesence dating and analysis of cosmogenic radionuclides.