Diatoms: a potential tool to understand past oceanographic settings

摘要

Diatoms are being potentially used to decipher palaeoceanography and past climatic changes. They are marine primary producers which play an important role in carbon, silica and nutrient budgets of modern oceans. Their importance lies in the role they play for the export of organic carbon to the deep sea and the efficiency of the biological pump for CO2 exchange. They are useful as biostratigraphical zone fossils in marine deposits from high latitudes or at deeper water depths, both of which lack calcareous microfossils. The role of diatoms as tracers of past oceanographic conditions with recent perspectives in diatom research is reviewed in this article.