Currently, between one-third and two-thirds of marine species may be undescribed, and previous estimates of there being well over one million marine species appear highly unlikely. More species than ever before are being described annually by an increasing number of authors. If the current trend continues, most species will be discovered this century.

Marine planktonic diatoms export carbon to the deep ocean, playing a key role in the global carbon cycle. Although commonly thought to have diversified over the Cenozoic as global oceans cooled, only two conflicting quantitative reconstructions exist, both from the Neptune deep-sea microfossil occurrences database. Total diversity shows Cenozoic increase but is sample size biased; conventional subsampling shows little net change. We calculate diversity from a separately compiled new diatom species range catalog, and recalculate Neptune subsampled-in-bin diversity using new methods to correct for increasing Cenozoic geographic endemism and decreasing Cenozoic evenness. We find coherent, substantial Cenozoic diversification in both datasets. Many living cold water species, including species important for export productivity, originate only in the latest Miocene or younger. We make a first quantitative comparison of diatom diversity to the global Cenozoic benthic ∂18O (climate) and carbon cycle records (∂13C, and 20-0 Ma pCO2). Warmer climates are strongly correlated with lower diatom diversity (raw: rho = .92, p<.001; detrended, r = .6, p = .01). Diatoms were 20% less diverse in the early late Miocene, when temperatures and pCO2 were only moderately higher than today. Diversity is strongly correlated to both ∂13C and pCO2 over the last 15 my (for both: r>.9, detrended r>.6, all p<.001), but only weakly over the earlier Cenozoic, suggesting increasingly strong linkage of diatom and climate evolution in the Neogene. Our results suggest that many living marine planktonic diatom species may be at risk of extinction in future warm oceans, with an unknown but potentially substantial negative impact on the ocean biologic pump and oceanic carbon sequestration. We cannot however extrapolate our my-scale correlations with generic climate proxies to anthropogenic time-scales of warming without additional species-specific information on proximate ecologic controls.

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This paper summarizes the biostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy of the 11 sites drilled on the Kerguelen Plateau and in Prydz Bay, Antarctica, during ODP Leg 119. Excellent magnetobiochronologic reference sections were obtained at deep-water Sites 745 and 746 (0-10 Ma) and at intermediate depth Site 744 (0-39 Ma) on the southern Kerguelen Plateau. Site 738, an intermediate depth companion site for Site 744, contains a nearly complete lowermost Oligocene to Turonian carbonate section including a continuous sequence across the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Northern Kerguelen Sites 736 and 737 (ca. 600 m water depth) constitute a composite middle Eocene to Quaternary reference section near the present-day Antarctic Polar Front. Biostratigraphic control is limited in Prydz Bay Sites 739-743. Glacial sequences cored on the continental shelf at Sites 739 and 742 appear to form a composite record, possibly from the uppermost middle Eocene to the Quaternary; the entire upper Oligocene and most of the Miocene, however, are removed at an unconformity. Preglacial sediments at Site 741 contain Early Cretaceous pollen and spores, but the red beds cored at Site 740 are unfossiliferous. Poorly-fossiliferous glacial sediments of probable Quaternary age were sampled on the upper slope at Site 743. A magnetobiochronologic time scale is presented for the Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic of the Southern Ocean based on previous studies and the results of Leg 119 studies.