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🚨🚨New Paper Alert🚨🚨
We have a new paper out in Earth & Planetary Science Letters (#EPSL) entitled “Indian margin methane hydrate dissociation recorded in the carbon isotopes of benthic (Miliolida) foraminifera”
Main take home message: we have identified a group of #benthic #foraminifera (unicellular organisms living at the bottom of the #ocean) whose shell chemistry carries signatures of #methane dynamics within #marine #sediments.
Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X23001140
Nerdy details: we show using #stableisotopes of #carbon (δ¹³C) and #oxygen (δ¹⁸O) that **ONLY** Miliolida benthic foraminifera (including #Pyrgo, #Quinqueloculina, & #Spiroloculina - pictures attached) found **ONLY** in sediments proximal to methane hydrates (site U1446 is in the NW Bay of Bengal) contain wildly negative δ¹³C signatures characteristics associated with methane dynamics in marine sediments. Check out those δ¹³C values!!