Biological and oxygen isotope records in Late Quaternary sediments from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

This paper presents quantitative analyses of plankton foraminifers and data of isotopic geochemistry samples from the core GAN 86-17 collected in the Levantine Bay southwest of Cyprus. The studied sedimentary sequence comprised the sapropels S1 to S7 deposited over the last 200,000 years. The aim of the research was to reconstruct the hydrological conditions during the deposition of the sapropels of the Late Quaternary in the eastern Mediterranean. The isotopic values of oxygen (delta18O) caused in Globigerinoides ruber, a planktonic foraminifer living in waters near the surface, indicate low salinity during the deposition of the sapropels. This information is also supported by the present plankton fauna. In the sapropel samples, there are peaks of occurrence of Globigerinoides ruber and Neogloboquadrina dutertrei, respectively, in the warm and cold phases. Both species indicated low salinity. Moreover, the current absence and/or strong reduction of Globorotalia inflata, a species that requires a strong mixing of the water column in winter, indicates annual stratification conditions in correspondence