This award supports the analysis of calcareous nannofossil assemblages from high quality Deep Sea Drilling Project/Ocean Drilling Program (DSDP/ODP) drill cores from the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean basins in order to reconstruct the thermal gradient of surface waters of those basins for the Campanian to Cenozoic time interval (84 million years ago to the present). This research applies statistical methods based on a polar ordination technique. Using this technique, and refining it through closer sampling intervals and a wider spectrum of recent ODP sites, particularly from the Antarctic Sector of the Southern Ocean (mainly ODP Legs 113 and 114 sites), this work will further refine the zonation and biochronology of nannofossils of the Southern Ocean, characterize major surface water masses and infer from biological gradients latitudinal thermal gradients, and record in detail latitudinal shifts in surface water masses through time as a means of tracing steps in the deterioration of global climates.
