Department of Palaeobiology, Swedish Museum of Natural History, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Science. 2022 May 20;376(6595):853-856. doi: 10.1126/science.abm7330. Epub 2022 May 19.
Predictions of how marine calcifying organisms will respond to climate change rely heavily on the fossil record of nannoplankton. Declines in calcium carbonate (CaCO) and nannofossil abundance through several past global warming events have been interpreted as biocalcification crises caused by ocean acidification and related factors. We present a global record of imprint-or "ghost"-nannofossils that contradicts this view, revealing exquisitely preserved nannoplankton throughout an inferred Jurassic biocalcification crisis. Imprints from two further Cretaceous warming events confirm that the fossil records of these intervals have been strongly distorted by CaCO dissolution. Although the rapidity of present-day climate change exceeds the temporal resolution of most fossil records, complicating direct comparison with past warming events, our findings demonstrate that nannoplankton were more resilient to past events than traditional fossil evidence suggests.
海洋钙化生物对气候变化的反应预测在很大程度上依赖于微体化石的记录。过去几次全球变暖事件中碳酸钙（CaCO）和微体化石丰度的下降被解释为海洋酸化和相关因素引起的生物钙化危机。我们提供了一个全球范围内的印痕化石记录，与这一观点相矛盾，揭示了在推测的侏罗纪生物钙化危机中，微体浮游生物得到了极好的保存。另外两个白垩纪变暖事件的印痕化石证实，这些时期的化石记录受到碳酸钙溶解的强烈扭曲。尽管当今气候变化的速度超过了大多数化石记录的时间分辨率，使得与过去的变暖事件进行直接比较变得复杂，但我们的研究结果表明，与传统化石证据相比，微体浮游生物对过去的事件更具弹性。
