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243
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Introduction
I'm a palaeontologist. My main fields of interest are Quaternary palaeoenvironmental and actualistic studies based on Ostracoda and Foraminifera addressing research questions of anthopogenic impacts, palaeoclimatology, sea and lake level changes as well as geoarchaeology in inland waters and marginal marine systems world wide. Doing this I rely on (palaeo)ecological analyses including multivariate techniques, morphological and shell chemistry approaches backed by a reliable taxonomy.
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January 1992 - October 1998
November 2007 - August 2010
February 2005 - present
Publications
Publications (243)
The impact of human activities on aquatic ecosystems has been a growing concern requiring reliable bioindicators for monitoring environmental changes. Ostracods, a group of small crustaceans, have shown great potential in this role due to their sensitivity to various pollutants and environmental conditions. We review all studied responses of Ostrac...
Human activities increasingly impact aquatic ecosystems, necessitating reliable bioindicators for monitoring. Ostracods, small crustaceans are sensitive to pollutants and have proven being effective in this role. This review summarizes Ostracoda responses to anthropogenic stresses across global water bodies, highlighting their value as indicators f...
Eye loss has been a long‐standing interest in evolutionary biology. Many organisms that inhabit environments without light penetration, for example the deep sea, exhibit eye loss and thus become blind. However, water‐depth distribution of eyes in marine organisms is poorly understood. Ostracods are widely distributed crustaceans, and many sighted m...
Taxonomic clarification of Tonnacypris stewarti comb. nov. (= Herpetocypris stewarti), a non-marine ostracod first described by Daday in 1908, was required due to the existence of various synonyms without detailed morphological descriptions. Our study examined specimens from Mang-tsa, Nam Co (Tibetan Plateau) and Lake Band-e Amir (Afghanistan). We...
The Iranian Plateau and the Zagros Mountain chain, located at the crossroads of Africa and Eurasia, occupy a critical geographical position in out-of-Africa scenarios, sitting astride a major dispersal corridor into southern and central Asia. Yet, the region’s role in human population expansions remains under-investigated. Here, we present findings...
Anthropogenic activities have exerted strong influence on ecosystems worldwide, particularly since 1950 CE. The local impact of past human activities often started much earlier and deserves detailed study. Here, we present an environmental record from a 278 cm-long sedimentary core from Lake Höglwörth (Bavaria, Germany). Sedimentological and geoche...
The Mlalazi River flows through a natural reserve at the eastern coast of South Africa and has been regarded as free from contamination. To prove it and assess the ecological state of aquatic life in the reserve, as well as to enhance the indicator value of marginal marine Foraminifera and Ostracoda in South Africa, we conducted an analysis of micr...
The Mlalazi River flows through a natural reserve at the eastern coast of South Africa and has been regarded as free from contamination. To prove it and assess the ecological state of aquatic life in the reserve, as well as to enhance the indicator value of marginal marine Foraminifera and Ostracoda in South Africa, we conducted an analysis of micr...
We provide a review of micropalaeontological research on Ostracoda from the Middle Pleistocene (MIS 11, Holstein interglacial) hominin site Bilzingsleben in Thuringia in Central Germany from 1963 to the 1990s. Samples from four sections inside and six search pits outside the excavation area were investigated and, in total, 49 ostracod species were...
High-resolution multi-proxy records from two lakes on the southern Tibetan Plateau, Nam Co and Tangra Yumco, are used to infer long-term variations in the Asian monsoon system with a novel set of ostracod shell chemistry proxies. We track the moisture evolution since the Last Glacial Maximum using the trace element, rare earth element (REE) and sta...
Ostracods as bioindicators are extremely useful for reconstructing palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate and can also indicate the provenance of sediments and materials, for example, in studies on ancient commercial networks. Ostracods are small crustaceans that live in almost all aquatic habitats, both natural and man‐made. Due to their calcitic car...
The early to middle Holocene Humid Period led to a greening of today’s arid Saharo-Arabian desert belt. While this phase is well defined in North Africa and the Southern Arabian Peninsula, robust evidence from Northern Arabia is lacking. Here we fill this gap with unprecedented annually to sub-decadally resolved proxy data from Tayma, the only know...
Upper Turonian to lower Coniacian marls of the Strehlen Formation of the Graupa 60/1 core were investigated for their foraminiferal content to add stratigraphical and palaeoenvironmental information about the transitional facies zone of the Saxonian Cretaceous Basin. Further comparison with foraminiferal faunas of the Brausnitzbach Marl (Schrammste...
In light of global warming and rising relative sea level (RSL), detailed reconstructions of RSL histories and their controlling processes are essential in order to manage coastal‐protection challenges. This study contributes to unravelling Holocene RSL change on the East Frisian North Sea coast in high resolution and with a new approach for the Ger...
The South Asian Monsoon (SAM) brings precipitation crucial for agriculture across the densely populated region of South Asia. Identifying the key long-term drivers of the SAM is essential to improve the predictability of future monsoonal trends in the context of current global climate scenarios and increasingly frequent drought and flooding events...
Richards Bay Harbour (RBH) is situated in the industrialized area on the northeast coast of South Africa. To decipher recent human activities and accompanying environmental degradation, surface sediment was collected across RBH and analysed for granulometric and elemental composition, microfaunal assemblages, and microplastics. Microplastics occur...
The Lower Permian of Central Europe is mainly recorded by continental, intramountain
sediments, since it was positioned in the centre of the supercontinent Pangaea. Sand and
siltstones of several fossil sites in the Tambach Formation contain a characteristic
fauna and flora, indicating extreme environments caused by a continental nearequatorial
cli...
Ostracoda, minute aquatic crustaceans with calcitic shells, are highly versatile proxies in geoarchaeological contexts. Their species-specific ecological preferences and ranges allow the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments and anthropogenic impacts in detail. Environmentally driven morphological variability and shell chemistry signatures as stable...
To improve the indicator value of marginal marine Foraminifera and Ostracoda of Ghana we analysed 22 surface sediment samples for microfauna. They derive from the Keta Lagoon and Densu Estuary covering a salinity range from marine waters to 17.5 and one sample within the hyperhaline range (70). Except one, all samples contain Ostracoda and Foramini...
South Africa is a key region to reconstruct and understand past changes in atmospheric circulation, i.e. temperate westerlies and tropical easterlies. However, due to the scarcity of natural archives, South Africa's environmental evolution during the late Quaternary remains highly debated. Many available sediment archives are peri-coastal lakes and...
We combined biostratigraphical analyses, archaeological surveys, and Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) models to provide new insights into the relative sea-level evolution in the northeastern Aegean Sea (eastern Mediterranean). In this area, characterized by a very complex tectonic pattern, we produced a new typology of sea-level index point, base...
Abstract Dwelling in a variety of aquatic habitats, one of the most abundant groups of microcrustaceans, ostracodes, are widely used indicator organisms in paleolimnological research. Typically, they are identified via traditional methods using morphological features but this may be excessively time‐consuming and prone to inter‐investigator variati...
The archaeological sites in the open‐cast mine of Schöningen, Germany, represent outstanding archives for understanding Middle Pleistocene interglacial–glacial transitions and human adaption. Aquatic microfossil and pollen assemblages from the ‘Reinsdorf sequence’, likely correlated to Marine Isotope Stage 9, document environmental changes from a t...
High altitudinal aquatic ecosystems are subject to environmental change due to global warming
and increasing solar radiation. The Nam Co catchment is part of the highest and largest alpine
plateau on Earth, where the effects of climate change are expressed stronger than the global
average. Thus, this area has experienced rapid changes in biodiversi...
High altitudinal aquatic ecosystems are subject to environmental change due to global warming and increasing solar radiation. The Nam Co catchment is part of the highest and largest alpine
plateau on Earth, where the effects of climate change are expressed stronger than the global average. Thus, this area has experienced rapid changes in biodiversi...
Environmental evolution and morphodynamics reconstruction were conducted by means of a multidisciplinary studies (geomorphological, microfaunistic, geochemical, stratigraphic) on the Special Protection Site of Palude di Torre Flavia (Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy) to provide a background for future monitoring actions to safeguard and manage of this site an...
South Africa is a key region for paleoclimate studies reconstructing and understanding past changes in atmospheric circulation, i.e., temperate Westerlies and tropical Easterlies. However, due to the scarcity of natural archives, the environmental evolution during the late Quaternary remains highly debated. Many archives that are available are peri...
We present a list of Ostracoda (Crustacea) from stratigraphic sections of Mio–Pleistocene lacustrine deposits from Zhada
Basin, western Tibetan Plateau. In this area, almost no taxonomical studies were carried out so far, and, aiming to a future
use of ostracods as palaeoenvironmental proxy for this sector of the Tibetan Plateau, a documentation of...
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has recently circulated a letter, dated 21st April, 2020, to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). In this letter, significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology are requested. In our pr...
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) has recently circulated a letter, dated 21st April, 2020, to more than 300 palaeontological journals, signed by the President, Vice President and a former President of the society (Rayfield et al. 2020). In this letter, significant changes to the common practices in palaeontology are requested. In our pr...
Glacially dislocated fossiliferous clay – hitherto called Cyprina clay– and associated Pleistocene sediments are exposed at the northeastern German coast. They were uplifted as glacial rafts from a position of about 30 m below the sea level and incorporated into glaciotectonic complexes of Dornbusch (Hiddensee), Arkona (Rügen) and Greifswalder Oie...
The inner to mid continental shelf of the Agulhas Bank, which forms part of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, is scattered with Pleistocene deposits. Their wide lateral extension is the expression of a flat underlying substrate, availability of accommodation space, and depositional processes in response to glacio-eustatic sea-level change. We present seism...
In light of rising sea levels and increased storm surge hazards, detailed information on relative sea-level (RSL) histories and local controlling mechanisms is required to support future projections and to better prepare for future coastal-protection challenges. This study contributes to deciphering Holocene RSL changes at the German North Sea coas...
Coastal zones and in general the transitional environments between marine and continental ecosystems are among the most densely populated areas of the world with consequent conflicting economical and other interest of use. In the developing African nations this risk is increasing because of the difficult balance between the fast economic and popula...
Due to the scarcity of natural archives for palaeoenvironmental studies, the climatic evolution of South Africa during the late Quaternary remains the subject of considerable debate. Peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen near the southern Cape coast, located 152 m a...
The continental shelf of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP) is scattered with Pleistocene deposits with subdued topography. Their exaggerated lateral extension is the expression of a flat underlying substrate and availability of accommodation space, depositional processes and response to glacio-eustatic sea-level change have influenced deposition and d...
The continental shelf of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP) is scattered with Pleistocene deposits with subdued topography. Their exaggerated lateral extension is the expression of a flat underlying substrate and availability of accommodation space, depositional processes and response to glacio-eustatic sea-level change have influenced deposition and d...
Throughout human history, communication and trade have been key to society. Because maritime trade facilitated the rapid transportation of passengers and freight at relatively low cost, harbours became hubs for traffic, trade and exchange. This general statement holds true for the Pergamenian kingdom, which ruled wide parts of today's western Turke...
Cyprideis torosa(Jones) is a common ostracod species in brackish waters of large parts of the world. The species appears in, but it is not restricted to, marginal marine areas, and it thus plays a significant role in identifying variable impacts between the marine and terrestrial realms as its carapace changes phenotypically under various condition...
Holocene delta formations are unique records of regional sea-climate interactions. The Kızılırmak Delta is the biggest and richest wetland ecosystem in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The Black Sea was uniquely affected by rising sea-levels due to its disconnection from the world oceans during the last glacial period. To understand the palaeoenviro...
The spatial variability of relative sea-level (RSL) changes in the German Bight over the Holocene is not entirely resolved, hidden behind a plethora of different global to local driving factors, as well as vertical uncertainty associated with peat layers (indicative meaning, post-depositional compaction, no continuous data etc.), the most commonly...
To date, geological evidence of palaeoenvironmental change in northwestern Saudi Arabia is scarce. At Taymāʾ, the stratigraphy of a sabkha (salt flat) provides evidence for Holocene climatic and landscape change. Preliminary interpretation of multi-proxy nalysis and palaeontological findings indicates that a large perennial lake existed in the sabk...
Throughout mankind's history, the need to secure and protect the home settlement was an essential one. This holds especially true for the city of Ainos (modern Enez) in Turkish Thrace. Due to its continuous settlement history since the 7th/6th century BC, several different types of city walls were built-sometimes even on top of each other-several o...
Many remains of organisms in Holocene sediments from the Baltic Sea enter the fossil record. These (sub)fossils bear a wealth of information about past environments. The present paper describes all relevant taxonomic groups larger than 63 μm and gives data on hard part identification, preservation, ecology and applications. Many important taxa are...
An array of sediment surface samples collected from the coastal lake Eilandvlei and its bar-built estuary, on the southern Cape coast, South Africa were analysed for their micro- and meio-organism diversity to understand the complexity in their distribution in relation to their habitat and in response to physicochemical parameters. The variation in...
Tangra Yumco, a large saline lake located in the central–southern part of the Tibetan Plateau, lies in a hydrologically closed basin and is part of a cascade lake system including Tangqung Co, Tangra Yumco and Xuru Co. The extension and position of this lake system makes it valuable for reconstructing palaeoclimatic variations through the lake hist...
Thermokarst lakes cover nearly one fourth of ice-rich permafrost lowlands in the Arctic. Sediments from an athalassic subsaline thermokarst lake on Herschel Island (69°36′N; 139°04′W, Canadian Arctic) were used to understand regional changes in climate and in sediment transport, hydrology, nutrient availability and permafrost disturbance. The sedim...
Two archaeological excavation sites, Fundplatz 225 „Mischwasserspeicher“ and Fundplatz 290 „Ozeaneum“, located close to the medieval town centre of Stralsund at the Strelasund were investigated. Using methods of sedimentology and (micro)palaeontology, the aim of this study was the reconstruction of environmental changes from Mesolithic to Modern Ti...
The spatial variability of relative sea-level (RSL) changes in the German Bight over the Holocene is not entirely resolved, hidden behind a plethora of different global to local driving factors, as well as vertical uncertainty associated with peat layers (indicative meaning, post-depositional compaction, no continuous data etc.), the most commonly...
Due to the scarcity of natural archives for paleoenvironmental studies, the climatic evolution of South Africa during the late Quaternary is highly debated. Peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen at the southern Cape coast, in the year round rainfall zone of South Af...
The Late Quaternary lake history of Taro Co and three neighbouring lakes was investigated to reconstruct local hydrological conditions and the regional moisture availability. Ostracod-based water depth and habitat reconstructions combined with OSL and radiocarbon dating are performed to better understand the Taro Co lake system evolution during the...
Die Rügener Schreibkreide (Ober-Kreide: Maastrichtium) ist eine bedeutende Typuslokalität der europäischen Oberkreide. Bisher sind von dort mehr als 1.470 Taxa nachgewiesen; bei der Mehrzahl handelt es sich um Mikro- und Mesofossilien. Vorliegender Exkursionsführer fasst den derzeitigen Kenntnisstand zur Regionalgeologie, Stratigraphie, Paläontolog...
A multiproxy approach, focusing on biological proxies, was undertaken to determine the influence of sea-level changes along the southern Cape coast and the variability of water masses over the central Agulhas Bank region during the Holocene. A 30.47 m sedimentary core extracted from the coastal lake, Eilandvlei, shows continuous deposition for the...
Middle Miocene to Plio-Pleistocene foraminifera provide insights into the palaeoenvironment on the northern Namibian continental shelf located at the far northern end of the present-day Benguela Upwelling System (BUS). Biostratigraphy and Strontium Isotope Stratigraphy (SIS) of the recovered basal olive-green mud unit indicate an age of 16 to 14 Ma...
Lake or marsh sediments in the Qa'a Jahran–Dhamār area indicate a period of higher moisture availability in the early Holocene of the highlands of Yemen. Forty-two marl–peat sediment samples from eight stratigraphic sections of that area have been collected and are examined for the first time for their ostracod associations. Eight species belonging...
A faunistic survey covering 25 sites in estuaries, coastal lakes and ponds along the west coast of South Africa between the Cape of Good Hope in the south and the Olifants River in the north was carried out in May 2014. The study aimed to establish a dataset with ecological and distribution data of ostracods and foraminifers for later palaeoenviron...
Lake sediments as well as peat deposits provide excellent archives to investigate past environmental and climate variability. Vankervelsvlei, a fen at the southern cape coast, in the year-round rainfall zone (YRZ) of South Africa, located 152 m above mean sea level is one of the scarce environmental archives in this region. From this fen a 15 m lon...
Stable isotopes and trace elements in ostracod shells have been used widely in paleolimnological investigations of past lake hydrochemistry and climate because they provide insights into past water balance and solute evolution of lakes. Regional differences in lake characteristics and species-specific element fractionation, however, do not permit g...
Due to the high sensitivity of southern Africa to climate change, a reliable understanding of its hydrological system is crucial. Recent studies of the regional climatic system have revealed a highly complex interplay of forcing factors on precipitation regimes. This includes the influence of the tropical easterlies, the strength of the southern he...
Here we present a multi-proxy investigation of the Klein Klütz Höved (KKH) coastal cliff section in northeastern Germany, involving lithofacies analysis, micromorphology, micropalaeontology, palynology and luminescence dating of quartz and feldspar. We subdivide the local stratigraphy into three depositional phases. (i) Following a Saalian advance...
The absence of common sea-level indicators in the study area of Elaia, Pergamon's harbour city in Hellenistic and Roman times, forced to establish a new reliable indicator, which was found in the foraminifera associations in connection with the transgressive contact. The strength of this indicator is the exclusion of post-depositional compaction. A...
The occurrence of athalassic foraminiferal species, along with the brackish-water ostracod Cyprideis torosa, the barnacle Amphibalanus amphitrite, and brackish-water gastropods, prove the existence of a saline lake at Tayma, northern Saudi Arabia, during the early to mid-Holocene. Outcrops at the former shoreline, as well as a single sediment core,...
The global mean sea level is rising as a result of climate change and is likely to affect millions of people. It is essential to understand and quantify regional relative sea-level variability to be able to predict future changes. Proxy evidence is necessary for extending our understanding of past sea-level changes beyond the industrial era, and sa...
Kızılırmak River (1355 km), the longest river of Turkey, traverses the Central Pontides and forms a large delta into the Black Sea. Kızılırmak Delta (41 30 to 41 45' N, 35 43' to 36 08' E) is the biggest and the richest wetland ecosystem in the Black Sea Region of Turkey and covers an area of 56.000 ha that includes 15.000 ha of brackish marshes an...
Relative sea-level reconstructions at the German North Sea coast so far are based on peat horizons, which complicates the search for accurate sea level index points. Firstly, their spatial distribution in the coastal Holocene is sparse and, secondly, they are strongly influenced by post-depositional compaction (BUNGENSTOCK & WEERTS 2010). Therefore...
The Daotanghe riverine wetland in close proximity to the Qinghai Lake was investigated to demonstrate the interrelationships between Qinghai Lake hydrodynamic processes, eolian mobility and ecological conditions during the past 1100 years in response to climate change. We used ostracod assemblages from various sites east of Qinghai Lake and from th...
We test several methods of ostracod-based palaeoenvironmental reconstruction using indicator species approach, mutual ecological/climatic range methods, transfer functions, modern analogue technique and morphological variation within Cyprideis torosa in reconstructing the site evolution of a late Quaternary small lake basin in Thuringia, Central Ge...
Aim
Salt‐marsh foraminifera are widely used as robust sea‐level indicators. High‐resolution Holocene sea‐level reconstructions depend on the accurate characterization of modern foraminifera‐environment relationships representative of a study site. We investigate the relationship between modern foraminiferal assemblage distribution and key environme...
Recent studies of the South African climatic system revealed a highly complex interplay of forcing factors on precipitation regimes. This includes the influence of the tropical easterlies, the strength of the Southern Hemispheric Westerlies as well as sea surface temperatures along the coast of the subcontinent. This study of a sediment core at the...
