Late Pleistocene‐Holocene benthic foraminiferal distribution in the southwestern Barents Sea: Paleoenvironmental implications

Abstract

A benthic foraminiferal stratigraphy from the southwestern Barents Sea indicates that foraminifera were reworked and deposited in tills during the last glaciation. The deglaciation occurred in three main steps: (1) Presence of an Elphidium excavatum dominated assemblage > 13,300–12,000 B.P. (2), Nonion barleeanum dominated assemblage 12,000–10,000 B.P., and (3) establishment of a fauna similar to the modern one at 10,000 B.P. The transition from step 1 to step 2 indicates that the deglacial warming/incipient intrusion of Atlantic water was delayed in the southwestern Barents Sea compared with the western margin of the Norwegian shelf by approximately 1,000 years. Corrosive bottom water that formed during the last deglaciation causing carbonate dissolution may be due to poor ventilation or increased biogenic production accompanying the inferred oceanographic changes.