Skeletal carbonate mineralogy of Scottish bryozoans

This paper describes the skeletal carbonate mineralogy of 156 bryozoan species collected from Scotland (sourced both from museum collections and from waters around Scotland) and collated from literature. This collection represents 79% of the species which inhabit Scottish waters and is a greater number and proportion of extant species than any previous regional study. The study is also of significance globally where the data augment the growing database of mineralogical analyses and offers first analyses for 26 genera and four families. Specimens were collated through a combination of field sampling and existing collections and were analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and micro-XRD to determine wt% MgCO3 in calcite and wt% aragonite. Species distribution data and phylogenetic organisation were applied to understand distributional, taxonomic and phylo-mineralogical patterns. Analysis of the skeletal composition of Scottish bryozoans shows that the group is statistically different from neighbouring Arctic fauna but features a range of mineralogy comparable to other temperate regions. As has been previously reported, cyclostomes feature low Mg in calcite and very little aragonite, whereas cheilostomes show much more variability, including bimineralic species. Scotland is a highly variable region, open to biological and environmental influx from all directions, and bryozoans exhibit this in the wide range of within-species mineralogical variability they present. This plasticity in skeletal composition may be driven by a combination of environmentally-induced phenotypic variation, or physiological factors. A flexible response to environment, as manifested in a wide range of skeletal mineralogy within a species, may be one characteristic of successful invasive bryozoans

Paleoceanography

Paleoceanography is the science of the history of the world ocean and its subbasins, of their physiography, benthic and planktonic biota, water masses and their properties, circulation patterns of surface, intermediate, and bottom water masses. Quantitative paleoceanography can in essence only be done from pelagic and hemipelagic sediments of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ocean, basically from the age of the oldest undisturbed ocean crust to modern times. It is closely linked to the time of collecting ocean-wide geophysical data (marine seismics, magnetics), of deep-sea drilling and our increasing ability to collect long sediment cores, providing a global coverage and long, undisturbed time series of paleoceanographic data. It is henceforth a young subdiscipline of the marine geosciences

Marine Geosciences: A Short, Eclectic, and Weighted Historic Account

Marine geosciences are covering all phenomena and processes related to the formations of shallow shelf seas and of the deep ocean. They draw on modern dynamics of seafloor and sediment formation, marine geophysics and tectonics, volcanology, geochemistry, microbiology, biology, and paleontology of marine organisms. They are of great economic importance because of the wealth of nonliving marine resources