Advances in Earth Science ›› 2009, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (11): 1229-1237. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2009.11.1229

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Applications of Non-marine Ostracods in Quaternary Paleoenvironment—Advances and Problems in Fossil Assemblages

ZHANG Jiawu, HE Jing, CHEN Shuo, LI Shuang   

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China′s Environmental System (Ministry of Education), Lanzhou University, Lanzhou730000, China
  • Received:2009-03-11 Revised:2009-09-07 Online:2009-11-10 Published:2009-11-10

ZHANG Jiawu, HE Jing, CHEN Shuo, LI Shuang. Applications of Non-marine Ostracods in Quaternary Paleoenvironment—Advances and Problems in Fossil Assemblages[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2009, 24(11): 1229-1237.

Mon-marine ostracods have been successfully used as an indictor of Quaternary paeoenvironmental changes throughout the world during the past several decades. Fossil assemblages have become a conventional biological proxy in paleoenvironment reconstruction for many non-marine environments indicative of paeotemperature, paleosalinity (or water chemistry), water depth (or lake level), paeohydrology and human impacts on the natural environment. Quantitative analyses of the relationship between modern assemblages and environmental parameters provide robust calibration for reconstructing paleoenvironment quantitatively by establishing different types of transfer functions. Prominent advances have been made in quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstruction during the past ten years or so. Attentions should be paid to the pretreatments on samples in order not to alter the primitive assemblages and the evaluation on the taphonomy of the fossil ostracods also provides valuable information of the paleoenvronment or paeoecology. Compared to international researches, fossil assemblages and paeoenvironment study in China are currently concentrated on qualitative interpretations and quantitative calibrations are relatively rare, due to the lack of ecological information of the living species or populations through detailed regular observations. Therefore, more efforts should be made by the ostracodologists in the future in acquiring detailed modern ecological information of living species for the purpose of quantitative transfer functions as it is fundamental for the paleoenvironmental reconstruction.

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