Late Neogene Radiolarian Biostratigraphy of the Eastern North Pacific ODP Sites 1020/1021

Abstract

Abstract. During Ocean Drilling Program Leg 167, Sites 1020/1021 were drilled to assess the paleoceanographic conditions within the northern region of the California Current. Radiolarian records from the upper middle Miocene to Pleistocene were obtained at Sites 1020/1021 cores in order to develop a correlation between Neogene biostratigraphic data and paleomagnetic chronostratigraphy. Of 66 radiolarian events identified during this study, 26 Pleistocene to late Miocene events were directly tied to the paleomagnetic stratigraphy, and 40 middle to late Miocene events were correlated with that result by second-order methods based on the diatom biostratigraphy. The updated ages of radiolarian bioevents were estimated based on the geologic time scale of Ogg (2012). Of these events, 12 bioevents that define low-latitude tropical radiolarian zones were either missing at Sites 1020/1021, or proved to have different ranges from those in the tropics. Using selected bioevents of the temperate and subarctic species,...