Coupled microbial bloom and oxygenation decline recorded by magnetofossils during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum

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<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Understanding marine environmental change and associated biological turnover across the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; ~56 Ma)—the most pronounced Cenozoic short-term global warming event—is important because of the potential role of the ocean in atmospheric CO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> drawdown, yet proxies for tracing marine productivity and oxygenation across the PETM are limited and results remain controversial. Here we show that a high-resolution record of South Atlantic Ocean bottom water oxygenation can be extracted from exceptionally preserved magnetofossils—the bioinorganic magnetite nanocrystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) using a new multiscale environmental magnetic approach. Our results suggest that a transient MTB bloom occurred due to increased nutrient supply. Bottom water oxygenation decreased gradually from the onset to the peak PETM. These observations provide a record of microbial response to the PETM and establish the value of magnetofossils as palaeoenvironmental indicators.</jats:p>

Journal

  • Nature Communications

    Nature Communications 9 (1), 4007-, 2018-10-01

    Springer Science and Business Media LLC

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