Abstract
The annually laminated oil shale from the early middle Eocene maar lake at Messel provides unique palaeoenvironmental and climatological data for a time interval of ~640 kyr during the Palaeogene. Therefore, the research core Messel 2001 opened a unique window into ecological changes in the Palaeogene greenhouse environment, which are documented at the site by an undisturbed succession of 230 m of lacustrine sediments including >90 m of varved oil shale. For studying these sediments with respect to short-term climate variations, we applied different approaches such as high-resolution palynology and varve analysis. As a result, we have found changes in the vegetation following Milankovitch cycles in the range of precession, obliquity, and eccentricity as well as sub-Milankovitch cycles. Furthermore, ENSO signals have been detected in the varves.
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Lenz, O.K., Wilde, V., Riegel, W. (2014). Palynology as a High-Resolution Tool for Cyclostratigraphy in Middle Eocene Lacustrine Sediments: The Outstanding Record of Messel (Germany). In: Rocha, R., Pais, J., Kullberg, J., Finney, S. (eds) STRATI 2013. Springer Geology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04364-7_23
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