polar marine diatom floras as basic tools for paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental research: Ross Sea and Wilkes Land on the Antarctic continental margin

This work fits into the Cenozoic Antarctic continental margin sedimentary and oceanographic evolutionary context. Biosiliceous records relative to Pleistocene-Holocene sedimentary sequences, provide a key change to characterize Antarctic continental margin-cryogenic sediments and off shore-oceanidynamic environments. The cores proposed were collected by the Italian Antarctic Program (PNRA) in areas with different environmental histories: the Wilkes Lands continental slope (along the EAIS margin) and the wester Ross Sea continental shelf and slope. The Antarctic polar diatom assemblages, focused on some specific stratigraphic and ecological meaningfull taxa, are highlighted and inserted into their own depositional and oceanographic context. This work allows to characterize the diatom assemblages (dominances and biodiversity) from different Antarctic continental margins and to compare their own paleoenvironmental peculiarities and evolutions. The results prove that biosiliceous stratigraphic analyses may help to decode sedimentary sequences containing high frequency glacial cycles, as those inferred from other geochemical data.