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Ornithogenic sediments

Guano

Ornithogenic sediments built up by seabird-droppings (“guano”) are known from various areas and age sections in the world and are potentially useful but largely unexplored proxy archives for past ocean composition. Long-lasting arid climate favoured the preservation of stratified guano along the North Chilean and Peruvian Pacific coast with an age range from recent to ~2.5 Ma. Results on Nd, Sr, and Pb isotope ratios preserved in recent to fossil ornithogenic sediments indicate a direct reflection of composition of material-input from the lithosphere into the ocean that would allow tracing changing currents and the material delivered through time. The complicated but interesting isotope variability is potentially related to changing water mass movements e.g. mixing of surface water with variable quantities of run-off flux from the Andean magmatic arc in the humid climate zones of southern Chile and northward transport.

Re­la­ted Pu­bli­ca­ti­ons

Lu­cas­sen, F., Pritz­kow, W., Ros­ner, M., Sepúlve­da, F., Vásquez, P., Wil­ke, H., Ka­se­mann, S.A. (2017). The sta­ble iso­to­pe com­po­si­ti­on of ni­tro­gen and car­bon and ele­men­tal con­tents in mo­dern and fos­sil se­ab­ird gua­no from Nort­hern Chi­le – Ma­ri­ne sour­ces and dia­ge­ne­tic ef­fects. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0179440, doi.org/​10.1371/​jour­nal.pone.0179440

Projects

Ornithogenic sediments in the North Chilean Coast Range

DFG Research Center and the Cluster of Excellence, MARUM „Incentive Funds“ (F. Lucassen, S. Kasemann) Ornithogenic sediments in the North Chilean Coast Range ‐ a potential archive of the east Pacific Ocean