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Dryad

Plankton and benthic foraminiferal dataset for the study of the Eocene-Oligocene transition

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Mar 25, 2024 version files 1.76 MB
Jul 29, 2025 version files 1.77 MB

Abstract

The Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT) was the crucial turning point when Earth’s climate shifted to its current icehouse state. Understanding how the marine biosphere responded during this transition is not well-constrained, appearing as a simple extinction pulse in low temporal resolution global compendia. Here we designed a novel AI-inspired metaheuristics algorithm to construct a high-resolution global species richness history across the EOT for the rich foraminifera fossil record with an imputed ~29,000-year resolution. The revealed diversity dynamics are complex and differ for each foraminiferal group with distinct ecology. Planktonic and shallow-water larger benthic foraminifera show steady diversity levels in the early phases of the transition in the latest Eocene after a long-term reduction, while the deeper-water small benthic foraminifera radiate remarkably and decline over the same interval. In the earliest Oligocene, the planktonic and larger foraminifera suffered major species losses coincident with the first continental-scale ice sheet forming on Antarctica, while small benthic foraminifera diversity held steady, followed by an accelerating lowering as the early Oligocene proceeded. These findings reveal complicated and ecologically differentiated environment-life processes, indicating the importance of high-resolution temporal data for dissecting out ecological responses to major environmental changes.