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Abstract Bioturbation can increase time averaging by downward and upward movements of young and old shells within the entire mixed layer and by accelerating the burial of shells into a sequestration zone (SZ), allowing them to bypass the uppermost taphonomically active zone (TAZ). However, bioturbation can increase shell disintegration concurrently, neutralizing the positive effects of mixing on time averaging. Bioirrigation by oxygenated pore-water promotes carbonate dissolution in the TAZ, and biomixing itself can mill shells weakened by dissolution or microbial maceration, and/or expose them to damage at the sediment–water interface. Here, we fit transition rate matrices to bivalve age–frequency distributions from four sediment cores from the southern California middle shelf (50–75 m) to assess the competing effects of bioturbation on disintegration and time averaging, exploiting a strong gradient in rates of sediment accumulation and bioturbation created by historic wastewater pollution. We find that disintegration covaries positively with mixing at all four sites, in accord with the scenario where bioturbation ultimately fuels carbonate disintegration. Both mixing and disintegration rates decline abruptly at the base of the 20- to 40-cm-thick, age-homogenized surface mixed layer at the three well-bioturbated sites, despite different rates of sediment accumulation. In contrast, mixing and disintegration rates are very low in the upper 25 cm at an effluent site with legacy sediment toxicity, despite recolonization by bioirrigating lucinid bivalves. Assemblages that formed during maximum wastewater emissions vary strongly in time averaging, with millennial scales at the low-sediment accumulation non-effluent sites, a centennial scale at the effluent site where sediment accumulation was high but bioturbation recovered quickly, and a decadal scale at the second high-sedimentation effluent site where bioturbation remained low for decades. Thus, even though disintegration rates covary positively with mixing rates, reducing postmortem shell survival, bioturbation has theneteffect of increasing the time averaging of skeletal remains on this warm-temperate siliciclastic shelf.
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Millennial‐Scale Age Offsets Within Fossil Assemblages: Result of Bioturbation Below the Taphonomic Active Zone and Out‐of‐Phase Production
Abstract Oceanographic and evolutionary inferences based on fossil assemblages can be obscured by age offsets among co‐occurring shells (i.e., time averaging). To identify the contributions of sedimentation, mixing, durability, and production to within‐ and between‐species age offsets, we analyze downcore changes in the age‐frequency distributions of two bivalves on the California shelf. Within‐species age offsets are ~50–2,000 years forParvilucinaand ~2,000–4,000 years forNuculanaand between‐species offsets are 1,000–4,000 years within the 10‐ to 25‐cm‐thick stratigraphic units. Shells within the top 20–24 cm of the seabed are age‐homogeneous, defining the thickness of the surface completely‐mixed layer (SML), and have strongly right‐skewed age‐frequency distributions, indicating fast shell disintegration. The SML thus coincides with the taphonomic active zone and extends below the redoxcline at ~10 cm. Shells >2,000–3,000 years old occurring within the SML have been exhumed from subsurface shell‐rich units rich where disintegration is negligible (sequestration zone, SZ). Burrowers (callianassid shrimps) penetrate 40–50 cm below the seafloor into this SZ. The millennial offsets within each increment result from the advection of old shells from the SZ, combined with an out‐of‐phase change in species production. Age unmixing reveals thatParvilucinawas abundant during the transgressive phase, rare during the highstand phase, and increased steeply in the twentieth century in response to wastewater.Nuculanawas abundant during the highstand phase and has declined over the past two centuries. This sequestration‐exhumation dynamic accentuates age offsets by allowing both the persistence of shells below the SML and their later admixing with younger shells within the SML.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1855381
- PAR ID:
- 10460649
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology
- Volume:
- 34
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2572-4517
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 954-977
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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