Distribution of calcareous nannofossils in upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments of the Kerguelen Plateau

ODP Leg 119 drilled 11 sites on the Kerguelen Plateau (southern Indian Ocean) and Prydz Bay (East Antarctica). Upper Pliocene through Quaternary sediments were recovered at Site 736 on the northern Kerguelen Plateau; calcareous nannofossils occurred in only a few samples. Over 700 m of middle Eocene through Quaternary sediments was cored at Site 737 on the northern Kerguelen Plateau, and calcareous nannofossils are abundant in the middle Eocene through the middle Miocene sediments. Nearly 500 m of sediments ranging from the lower Turanian to the Quaternary was recovered at Site 738 on the southern Kerguelen Plateau; calcareous nannofossils are abundant from the Miocene downward. Calcareous nannofossils are also abundant in the upper Eocene through Miocene section from Site 744 on the southern Kerguelen Plateau. Except for Core 119-746A-13H, the Neogene sequences drilled at deep-water Sites 745 and 746 off the southern Kerguelen Plateau are devoid of calcareous nannofossils. Occurrences of calcareous nannofossils were generally rare and sporadic at Sites 739 and 742 in Prydz Bay and suggest that the diamictite sequences recovered is as old as middle Eocene-early Oligocene age. Other sites drilled in Prydz Bay (Sites 740, 741, and 743) did not yield calcareous nannofossils. Species diversity of calcareous nannofossils was low (about a dozen) in the southern Indian Ocean in the Late Cretaceous. High-latitude nanno floral characteristics are apparent after the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary extinctions. Cold climatic conditions limited Oligocene calcareous nannofossil assemblages to fewer than a dozen species, and extinctions of species generally were not compensated by originations of new species. Only a few species of calcareous nannofossils were found in the Miocene sequences, in which Coccolithuspelagicus and one or two species of Reticulofenestra exhibit extreme (0%-100%) fluctuations in assemblage dominance, and these fluctuations may reflect rapid fluctuations in the surface-water temperatures. Further deterioration of climate in the late Neogene essentially excluded calcareous nannoplankton from the Southern Ocean. Significantly warmer water conditions during part of the early-middle Pleistocene were inferred by a few lower-middle Pleistocene calcareous nannofossil species found on the Kerguelen Plateau. The calcareous nannofossil zonation of Roth (1978 doi:10.2973/dsdp.proc.44.134.1978) can be applied to the Upper Cretaceous section recovered at Site 738, and the zonation of Okada and Bukry (1980 doi:10.1016/0377-8398(80)90016-X) can be applied without much difficulty to the Paleocene to middle Eocene sequences from the Kerguelen Plateau. However, some conventional upper Paleogene markers are not useful for southern high latitudes, whereas a few nonconventional species events are useful for subdividing the upper Paleogene sequences. The latter species events include the first occurrence (FO) of Reticulofenestra reticulata, the FO and last occurrence (LO) of Reticulofenestra oamaruensis, the LO of Isthmolithus recurvus, and the LO of Chiasmolithus altus. As the Neogene sequences from the southern Indian Ocean contain only a few long-ranging, cold-water species, or are devoid of coccoliths, calcareous nannofossil zonations remain virtually unworkable for the Neogene in the high-latitude southern Indian Ocean as in other sectors of the Southern Ocean.