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For millions of years, the Mediterranean Sea has regularly experienced episodes of disrupted thermohaline circulation and increased primary productivity that resulted in a largely anoxic water column. These anoxic episodes are typically related to a more humid climate over Northern Africa and are captured in the sedimentary record as organic-rich sapropel layers. Given the excellent preservation of organic molecules in them, sapropels are extraordinary archives for the marine and continental ecosystems associated with the unique conditions that prevailed during their formation. We applied metagenomic environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis to recent sapropels (< 175 kyr) from the Eastern Mediterranean, including Sapropel S5 deposited during the Last Interglacial, and benchmarked obtained results with high resolution geochemical and molecular biomarker records. Ancient eDNA analysis enables reconstructions across all domains of life, including those components of the ecosystem that do not leave fossils or are not recorded in the fossil record. In the case of Mediterranean sapropels, this approach reveals information on both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. We provide detailed insight into vegetation changes in the Nile River Basin during the different, climatically diverse episodes of sapropel deposition. On the marine side, we reveal how water column ecology and major elemental cycles adapted to this massive ecosystem overhaul.
Wörmer et al. (Mon,) studied this question.