Journal article
Oxygen isotope signatures from land snail (Helix melanostoma) shells and body fluid: Proxies for reconstructing Mediterranean and North African rainfall
AL Prendergast, RE Stevens, G Barker, TC O'Connell
Chemical Geology | ELSEVIER | Published : 2015
Abstract
In this paper, we show that oxygen isotope ratios from the shell carbonate of the land snail Helix melanostoma reflect local rainfall parameters. Stable oxygen isotopes were measured in the body fluid (δ18Obody) and shells (δ18Oshell) of live-collected H. melanostoma along a north-south transect across the Gebel Akhdar in northeast Libya. δ18Obody ranged between -8.1‰ and 13.0‰ whilst δ18Oshell ranged between -1.0‰ and +2.8‰. To investigate the relationship between snail oxygen isotope composition and climate, these measurements were correlated with ambient air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall amount, and the δ18O composition of rainwater (δ18Orain). Strong and significant correlatio..
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Awarded by Cambridge Philosophical Society
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank James Rolfe, David Hodell and Louise Butterworth for assistance with stable isotope analyses; Jessica Royles and Glynn Jones for assistance with snail body fluid extraction; and Evan Hill, Chris Hunt, Abdulla al-Mabrock and Moatz al-Zwei for assistance with sample collection. Khalid El Fadli at the Libyan National Meteorological Centre kindly provided modern climate data. This research was supported by grants from the Rae and Edith Bennett Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the Association for Women Geoscientists, and the Cambridge Philosophical Society (to AP), and a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant 230421 (to GB). RES was funded by the Royal Society. The authors would like to thank Gianni Zanchetta and three anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments, which improved the quality of the manuscript.