Miocene to Recent planktonic foraminifera biochronology and evolution in the Pacific Warm Pool (IODP Expedition 363)

海洋沉积物中有大量的微观化石。我们的研究重点是一组被称为浮游有孔虫的生物，它们的外壳是用碳酸钙建造的。当浮游有孔虫死亡后，它们沉到海底，可以从国际海洋发现计划（IODP）收集的深海岩心中进行检查。浮游有孔虫提供了最好的化石记录之一，因为它们的数量和多样性。我们将利用这些化石来确定在过去的1500万年里，不同物种是何时进化和灭绝的。363探险队将从西太平洋暖池中回收沉积速率高的沉积物和保存完好的微化石。我们将能够将西太平洋的进化和灭绝事件的时间与其他地方（如大西洋）的先前记录进行比较。这将使我们能够测试灭绝事件的时间在不同的海洋盆地之间是同步的还是历时的。

Microscopic fossils are abundant in marine sediments. Our research focuses on a group of organisms called planktonic foraminifera that build their shells out of calcium carbonate. When the planktonic foraminifera die they sink to the seafloor and can be examined from deep sea cores collected from the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Planktonic foraminifera provide one of the best fossil records, because of their abundance and diversity. We will use these fossils to determine when different species evolved and went extinct over the last 15 million years. Expedition 363 will recover sediments with high sedimentation rates and well preserved microfossils from the Western Pacific Warm Pool. We will be able to compare the timing of evolutionary and extinction events from the western Pacific to previous record from elsewhere (such as the Atlantic Ocean). This will allow us to test whether the timing of extinction events is synchronous or diachronous between different ocean basins.