Abstract
Abstract. Mesozoic–Cenozoic organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst (dinocyst) biostratigraphy is a crucial tool for relative and numerical age control in complex ancient sedimentary systems. However, stratigraphic ranges of dinocysts are found to be strongly diachronous geographically. A global compilation of state-of-the-art calibrated regional stratigraphic ranges could assist in quantifying regional differences and evaluating underlying causes. For this reason, DINOSTRAT is here introduced – an open-source, iterative, community-fed database intended to house all regional chronostratigraphic calibrations of dinocyst events (https://github.com/bijlpeter83/DINOSTRAT.git, last access: 1 February 2022) (DOI – https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5772616, Bijl, 2021). DINOSTRAT version 1.0 includes >8500 entries of the first and last occurrences (collectively called “events”) of >1900 dinocyst taxa and their absolute ties to the chronostratigraphic timescale of Gradstein et al. (2012). Entries are derived from 199 publications and 188 sedimentary sections. DINOSTRAT interpolates paleolatitudes of regional dinocyst events, allowing evaluation of the paleolatitudinal variability in dinocyst event ages. DINOSTRAT allows for open accessibility and searchability, based on region, age and taxon. This paper presents a selection of the data in DINOSTRAT: (1) the (paleo)latitudinal spread and evolutionary history of modern dinocyst species, (2) the evolutionary patterns and paleolatitudinal spread of dinocyst (sub)families, and (3) a selection of key dinocyst events which are particularly synchronous. Although several dinocysts show – at the resolution of their calibration – quasi-synchronous event ages, in fact many species have remarkable diachroneity. DINOSTRAT provides the data storage approach by which the community can now start to relate diachroneity to (1) inadequate ties to chronostratigraphic timescales, (2) complications in taxonomic concepts, and (3) ocean connectivity and/or the affinities of taxa to environmental conditions.
Highlights
Over 50 years of research efforts has established a framework to use organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts as biostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic tools
This paper presents a selection of the data in DINOSTRAT: (1) thelatitudinal spread and evolutionary history of modern dinocyst species, (2) the evolutionary patterns and paleolatitudinal spread of dinocystfamilies, and (3) a selection of key dinocyst events which are synchronous
Dinocyst biostratigraphy is applied to sediments which are difficult to date otherwise, such as in restricted nearshore marine settings (e.g., Poulsen, 1994; Brinkhuis et al, 1998; Iakovleva et al, 2001; Sliwinska et al, 2012; Clyde et al, 2014) and polar regions (e.g., Sluijs et al, 2006; Bijl et al, 2013a; Houben et al, 2013; Radmacher et al, 2015; Sliwinska et al, 2020; Nøhr-Hansen et al, 2020)
Summary
Over 50 years of research efforts has established a framework to use organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts (dinocysts) as biostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic tools. Bijl: DINOSTRAT graphic calibration of dinocyst events have revealed strong diachroneity for many species between broad latitudinal bands and endemism of many species within latitudinal bands (e.g., Williams et al, 2004) Because this impacts the development of quasi-global dinocyst zonation schemes, as have been proposed for other microfossil groups (e.g., Martini, 1971; Gradstein et al, 2020), the question is, how should the research field of dinocyst biostratigraphy progress?. That diachroneity has been demonstrated, the step is to quantify the uncertainty in numerical ages of dinocyst events for each species and to assess regional consistency This is important when calibrated species ranges are geographically extrapolated over large distances. This paper represents the start of a community-fed data assembly approach to iteratively improve regional constraints on dinocyst biostratigraphy
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