Biostratigraphic and macroevolutionary study of Antartic Neogene rediolarian faunas

• Applicant: Dr. David Lazarus
• Subject Area: Palaeontology
• Term: from 2008 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 84744046

Antarctic Neogene radiolarians are one of the two main microfossil groups used to date Southern Ocean deep sea sediments and are also an extraordinarily complete and rich fossil record of species level evolutionary change in response to dramatically changing pelagic environments. Despite major improvements in species taxonomy and the recovery of numerous radiolarian rich sections in the last decades, the potential of these fossils for biostratigraphy and evolution research is underdeveloped, primarily due to incomplete use of taxonomic knowledge and incomplete recording of taxa occurrences. I propose to finish a new study, based on a now completed review and standardization of taxonomic concepts, currently being collected new, detailed, (nearly) full fauna data from several Antarctic sections, and (in this proposed year 3 of the project) analysis of this data using modern biostratigraphic and macroevolutionary tools (e.g. CONOP and the PBDB toolkit). The study will yield a new, much higher resolution radiolarian stratigraphy for dating Antarctic deep-sea sections, and a detailed documentation of this fauna’s evolution and response to climate change over the Neogene. The full occurrences data set will be made openly available for community study at the end of the project, while the revised taxonomy, including new taxonomic publications, is being incorporated into public websites and is supporting the development of digital taxonomic catalogs of microfossils for IODP (STP Recommendation 0601-09 and Consensus 0603-10; IODP project contracts for TNL development, 2008-2010 and other efforts via IODP's Paleo Coordination Group).

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 527: Bereich Infrastruktur - "International Ocean Discovery Program" (IODP)
• International Connection: New Zealand
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. James Crampton