From salt to sea, how does life recolonize a marine basin?

在IODP探险队398号在爱琴海航行的船上作业中，发现了中新世到上新世过渡的完整部分。这段时间间隔标志着墨西尼亚盐度危机的结束，在此期间，直布罗陀海峡的关闭可能导致地中海的大部分水域变得不适合许多水生生物居住。这不仅是自1996年以来从墨西尼亚盐度危机中恢复的第一个沉积物岩心，而且也是55年来科学海洋钻探中恢复的最完整的记录。为了研究这个间隔，我建议从IODP获得资金，在布里斯托尔大学进行初步分析。这些沉积物及其包含的化石遗骸为研究生态系统中海洋群落的生态反应提供了一个独特的机会。这项研究不仅有助于理解随着海洋环境变得更加恶劣，未来气候变化的潜在影响，而且还有助于模拟古代地球情景，那时海洋生态系统表现出与现代海洋明显不同的化学状态。

During shipboard operations whilst sailing on IODP Expedition 398 in the Aegean Sea, a complete section of the transition from the Miocene to the Pliocene was recovered. This interval marks the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis, the time when closure of the Gibraltar Strait may have caused much of the Mediterranean Sea to become drawn down and inhospitable to many aquatic organisms. Not only is this the first sediment core recovered from the Messinian Salinity Crisis since 1996, but it also the most complete record ever recovered in all 55 years of scientific ocean drilling. To investigate this interval, I propose to acquire funding from IODP to perform preliminary analyses at the University of Bristol. These sediments and the fossil remains they contain represent a unique opportunity to study the ecological response of marine communities within an ecosystem transitioning back to fully marine. The study has implications not only for understanding the potential effects of future climate change as marine environments become more hostile, but also for analogues of ancient Earth scenarios when marine ecosystems exhibited a significantly different chemical state to the modern ocean.