Deep-sea scleractinian coral age and depth distributions in the Northwest Atlantic over the last 225,000 years

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Publication Type Journal Article
School or College College of Mines & Earth Sciences
Department Geology & Geophysics
Creator Fernandez, Diego P.
Other Author Robinson, Laura F.; Adkins, Jess F.; Scheirer, Daniel S.; Gagnon, Alexander; Waller, Rhian G.
Title Deep-sea scleractinian coral age and depth distributions in the Northwest Atlantic over the last 225,000 years
Date 2007
Description Deep-sea corals have grown for over 200,000 yrs on the New England Seamounts in the northwest Atlantic, and this paper describes their distribution both with respect to depth and time. Many thousands of fossil scleractinian corals were collected on a series o f cruises from 2003- 2005; by contrast, live ones were scarce. On these seamounts, the depth distribution of fossil Desmophyllum dianthus (Esper, 1794) is markedly different to that oft he colonial scleractinian corals, extending 750m deeper in the water column to a distinct cut-off at 2500 m. This cut-off is likely to be controlled by the maximum depth of a notch-shaped feature in the seamount morphology. The ages of D. dianthus corals as determined by U-series measurements range from modern to older than 200,000 yrs. The age distribution is not constant over time, and most corals have ages from the last glacial period. Within the glacial period, increases in coral population density at Muir and Manning Seamounts coincided with times at which large-scale ocean circulation changes have been documented in the deep North Atlantic. Ocean circulation changes have an effect on coral distributions, but the cause of the link is not known.
Type Text
Publisher Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
Volume 81
Issue 3
First Page 371
Last Page 391
Subject Desmophyllum dianthus; Scleractinian coral; Seamounts; Northwest Atlantic
Subject LCSH Coral reef ecology; Corals, Fossil; Climatic changes; Ocean circulation
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Robinson L. F., Adkins J. F., Scheirer D. S., Fernandez D. P., Gagnon A., & Waller R. G. (2007). Deep-sea scleractinian coral age and depth distributions in the Northwest Atlantic over the last 225,000 years. Bulletin of Marine Sciences, 81(3), 371-91.
Rights Management (c)Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 1,756,425 bytes
Identifier ir-main,8757
ARK ark:/87278/s6280s80
Setname ir_uspace
ID 707355
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6280s80
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