Calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the Central Mediterranean Sea over the last four centuries: the impact of the Little Ice Age

Abstract. We present decadal-scale calcareous nannofossil data from four short cores (Station 272, 37° 17' N, 12° 48' E, 226 m depth; St 342, 36° 42' N, 13° 55' E, 858.2 m depth; St 407, 36° 23' N, 14° 27' E, 345.4 m depth; C90-1M, 40° 36' N, 14° 42' E, 103.4 m depth) recovered in the central Mediterranean Sea (northern Sicily Channel and Tyrrhenian Sea), which, on the basis of 210Pb activity span the last 200–350 years. Assemblages are dominated by placoliths, mostly Emiliania huxleyi, while, at least in the Sicily Channel sediments, Florisphaera profunda was an important part of the coccolithophore community. The paleoenvironmental reconstruction, based on ecological preference of species…