Wissenschaftler entdecken „Geister“-Fossilien – „völlig unerwartet“

Ein internationales Forscherteam hat eine neue Art der Versteinerung entdeckt.

Die Entdeckung von „Geister“-Fossilien zeigt die Widerstandsfähigkeit von Plankton angesichts vergangener globaler Erwärmungsereignisse.

Ein internationales Team von Wissenschaftlern des University College London (UCL), des Swedish Museum of Natural History, des Natural History Museum (London) und der University of Florence hat eine bemerkenswerte Art der Versteinerung entdeckt, die bisher praktisch unbemerkt geblieben ist.

Fossilien sind mikroskopische Fingerabdrücke oder „Geister“ von einzelligem Plankton, Coccolithophoren genannt, die vor Millionen von Jahren in Meeren lebten, und ihre Entdeckung revolutionierte unser Verständnis darüber, wie sich der Klimawandel auf Plankton in den Ozeanen auswirkt.

Geister-Nano-Fossilien aus Jurassic-Felsen in Yorkshire, Großbritannien. Bildnachweis: S. M. Slater et al.

Coccolithophoren sind in den heutigen Ozeanen wichtig, da sie einen Großteil des Sauerstoffs liefern, den wir atmen, die marinen Nahrungsnetze unterstützen und Kohlenstoff in den Sedimenten des Meeresbodens einschließen. Sie sind eine Art mikroskopisch kleines Plankton, das seine Zellen mit harten Kalksteinplatten, sogenannten Coccolithen, umgibt, die sich normalerweise in Felsen zersetzen.

Die Abnahme der Häufigkeit dieser Fossilien wurde bei mehreren Ereignissen vor der globalen Erwärmung dokumentiert, was darauf hinweist, dass dieses Plankton stark vom Klimawandel und der Versauerung der Ozeane betroffen war. Eine Studie wurde jedoch heute in der Zeitschrift veröffentlicht Wissenschaft Präsentiert neue Weltrekorde für die reichlich vorhandenen Geisterfossilien von drei[{“ attribute=““>Jurassic and Cretaceous warming events (94, 120, and 183 million years ago), suggesting that coccolithophores were more resilient to past climate change than was previously thought.

The individual plates are coccoliths. Credit: Images from Nannotax https://www.mikrotax.org/Nannotax3/

“The discovery of these beautiful ghost fossils was completely unexpected,” says Dr. Sam Slater from the Swedish Museum of Natural History. “We initially found them preserved on the surfaces of fossilized pollen, and it quickly became apparent that they were abundant during intervals where normal coccolithophore fossils were rare or absent – this was a total surprise!”

Despite their microscopic size, coccolithophores can be hugely abundant in the present ocean, being visible from space as cloud-like blooms. After death, their calcareous exoskeletons sink to the seafloor, accumulating in vast numbers, and forming rocks such as chalk.

The fossils are approximately 5 µm in length, 15 times narrower than the width of a human hair. Credit: S.M. Slater, P. Bown et al. / Science journal

“The preservation of these ghost nannofossils is truly remarkable,” says Professor Paul Bown (UCL). “The ghost fossils are extremely small ‒ their length is approximately five-thousandths of a millimeter, 15 times narrower than the width of a human hair! ‒ but the detail of the original plates is still perfectly visible, pressed into the surfaces of ancient organic matter, even though the plates themselves have dissolved away.”

The ghost fossils formed while the sediments at the seafloor were being buried and turned into rock. As more mud was gradually deposited on top, the resulting pressure squashed the coccolith plates and other organic remains together, and the hard coccoliths were pressed into the surfaces of pollen, spores, and other soft organic matter. Later, acidic waters within spaces in the rock dissolved away the coccoliths, leaving behind just their impressions – the ghosts.

Ghost nannofossils were found in rocks from global warming intervals where normal coccolithophore fossils were rare or absent. Credit: S.M. Slater, P. Bown, et al. / Science journal

“Normally, paleontologists only search for the fossil coccoliths themselves, and if they don’t find any then they often assume that these ancient plankton communities collapsed,” explains Professor Vivi Vajda (Swedish Museum of Natural History). “These ghost fossils show us that sometimes the fossil record plays tricks on us and there are other ways that these calcareous nannoplankton may be preserved, which need to be taken into account when trying to understand responses to past climate change.”

Professor Silvia Danise (University of Florence) says: “Ghost nannofossils are likely common in the fossil record, but they have been overlooked due to their tiny size and cryptic mode of preservation. We think that this peculiar type of fossilization will be useful in the future, particularly when studying geological intervals where the original coccoliths are missing from the fossil record.”

Ghost nannofossils were found globally, in rocks from three rapid warming events in Earth’s history (the T-OAE, OAE1a, and OAE2). Credit: S.M. Slater et al.

The study focused on the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), an interval of rapid global warming in the Early Jurassic (183 million years ago), caused by an increase in CO₂-levels in the atmosphere from massive volcanism in the Southern Hemisphere. The researchers found ghost nannofossils associated with the T-OAE from the UK, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand, but also from two similar global warming events in the Cretaceous: Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (120 million years ago) from Sweden, and Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (94 million years ago) from Italy.

“The ghost fossils show that nannoplankton were abundant, diverse, and thriving during past warming events in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, where previous records have assumed that plankton collapsed due to ocean acidification,” explains Professor Richard Twitchett (Natural History Museum, London). “These fossils are rewriting our understanding of how the calcareous nannoplankton respond to warming events.”

Finally, Dr. Sam Slater explains: “Our study shows that algal plankton were abundant during these past warming events and contributed to the expansion of marine dead zones, where seafloor oxygen-levels were too low for most species to survive. These conditions, with plankton blooms and dead zones, may become more widespread across our globally warming oceans.”

Reference: “Global record of “ghost” nannofossils reveals plankton resilience to high CO₂ and warming” by Sam M. Slater, Paul Bown, Richard J. Twitchett, Silvia Danise and Vivi Vajda, 19 May 2022, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abm7330