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Science 9 January 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5655, pp. 207 - 210
DOI: 10.1126/science.1090592
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Reports

Abiotic Forcing of Plankton Evolution in the Cenozoic

Daniela N. Schmidt,*{dagger} Hans R. Thierstein, Jörg Bollmann, Ralf Schiebel

We characterize the evolutionary radiation of planktic foraminifera by the test size distributions of entire assemblages in more than 500 Cenozoic marine sediment samples, including more than 1 million tests. Calibration of Holocene size patterns with environmental parameters and comparisons with Cenozoic paleoproxy data show a consistently positive correlation between test size and surface-water stratification intensity. We infer that the observed macroevolutionary increase in test size of planktic foraminifera through the Cenozoic was an adaptive response to intensifying surface-water stratification in low latitudes, which was driven by polar cooling.

Department of Earth Sciences, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, and University of Zürich, ETH-Zentrum, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland.



* Present address: Department of Geology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, UK.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: d.schmidt{at}gl.rhul.ac.uk

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