Changing seasonality patterns in Central Europe from Miocene Climate Optimum to Miocene Climate Transition deduced from the Crassostrea isotope archive

The Western Tethyan estuarine oyster Crassostrea gryphoides is an excellent climate archive due to its large size and rapid growth. It is geologically long lived and allows a stable isotope-based insight into climatic trends during the Miocene. Herein we utilised the climate archive of 5 oyster shells from the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO) and the subsequent Miocene Climate Transition (MCT) to evaluate changes of seasonality patterns. MCO shells exhibit highly regular seasonal rhythms of warm-wet and dry-cool seasons. Optimal conditions resulted in extraordinary growth rates of the oysters. delta C-13 profiles are in phase with delta O-18 although phytoplankton blooms may cause a slight offset. Estuarine waters during the MCO in Central Europe display a seasonal temperature range of c. 9-10 degrees C. Absolute water temperatures have ranged from 17 to 19 degrees C during cool seasons and up to 28 degrees C in warm seasons. Already during the early phase of the MCO, the growth rates are distinctly declining, although gigantic and extremely old shells have been formed at that time. Still, a very regular and well expressed seasonality is dominating the isotope profiles, but episodically occurring extreme climate events influence the environments. The seasonal temperature range is still c. 9 degrees C but the cool season temperature seems to be slightly lower (16 degrees C) and the warm season water temperature does not exceed c. 25 degrees C. In the later MCT at c. 12.5-12.0 Ma the seasonality pattern is breaking down and is replaced by successions of dry years with irregular precipitation events. No correlation between delta O-18 and delta C-13 is documented maybe due to a suboptimal nutrition level which would explain the low growth rates and small sizes. The amplitude of seasonal temperature range is decreasing to 5-8 degrees C. No clear cooling trend can be postulated for that time as the winter season water temperatures range from 15 to 20 degrees C. This may point to unstable precipitation rhythms on a multi-annual to decadal scale as main difference between MCO and MCI climates in Central Europe instead of a simple temperature decline scenario. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.