Abstract
Marine sediments contain a great diversity of organic molecules which have originated in situ and from planktonic organisms. The establishment of a direct relationship between possible ‘chemical markers’ and source organisms would enable studies of biomass-turnover time to be undertaken, using dated sediment cores as temporal records. Studies of the influence of long-term environmental variations on the abundance of planktonic flora and fauna are potentially amenable to this approach. Chemical compounds biosynthesized by organisms in the water column are, however, subjected to microbial attack, oxidation and other degradative processes before, and indeed after, sedimentary incorporation1. We show here that changes in the sedimentary abundances and distribution of selected chemical moieties produced by oxidative degradation of fatty acids of planktonic origin, can provide evidence for a change in algal abundance and distribution in the overlying oceanic waters.
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Gillan, F., Johns, R. Oxic diagenetic products as indicators of past oceanic algal populations and diversity. Nature 298, 744–746 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/298744a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/298744a0
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