Marine mollescan proxy data applied to Scottish late glacial and Flandrian sites: strengths and limitations

Abstract

Abstract Knowledge of modern benthonic marine molluscs found in shallow water enables their distribution to be correlated with hydrographic conditions and the derived proxy data applied to late Quaternary assemblages. The application of such data for bottom temperature, minimum sea surface temperature and minimum salinity to four Flandrian and Late glacial sites shows that it is possible to follow changes in these parameters with time, in some cases in considerable detail. The chief limitations are that faunas from some boreholes and sections are sparse and of low diversity and that few taxa are restricted to narrow ranges of temperature and/or salinity. Where fossils of stenothermal and stenohaline species are absent from a profile, faunal analysis inevitably yields a less than precise picture of conditions. It is possible to give only generalized constraints on water depth because this is not a prime factor controlling the distribution of molluscs on the seafloor today. The palaeoenvironmental analysis of the four sites is briefly discussed in a wider context.