Thick, late Quaternary sediment sections were recovered at several sites on the leeward slope of Great Bahama Bank during Leg 166 of the Ocean Drilling Program. These sections have paleoceanographic records with potentially high temporal resolution. To make an initial assessment of the records corresponding to the Holocene highstand of sea level, we have identified and dated the sediments from ...

Synchronised reproduction offers clear benefits to planktonic foraminifera – an important group of marine calcifiers – as it increases the chances of successful gamete fusion. Such synchrony requires tuning to an internal or external clock. Evidence exists for lunar reproductive cycles in some species, but its recognition in shell flux time series has proven difficult, raising questions about r...

Hantkenina is a distinctive planktonic foraminiferal genus characterized by the presence of tubulospines (robust hollow projections) on each adult chamber, from Middle and Upper Eocene marine sediments worldwide. Here we illustrate its evolutionary origin using c. 150 specimens from 30 stratigraphic intervals in two sediment cores from Tanzania. The specimens, which span an estimated time inter...

Planktonic foraminifera are a source of important geochemical, palaeoceanographic, and palaeontological data. However, many aspects of their ecology remain poorly understood, including whether or not gross morphology has an ecological function. Here, we measure the force needed to crush multiple planktonic foraminiferal morphotypes from modern core top and tow samples. We find significant diffe...