Quantitative data on latest-quaternary benthic foraminiferal assemblages in the South Evoikos Gulf semi-enclosed basin (central Aegean, Greece)

Markella Asimina Louvari; Hara Drinia; George Kontakiotis; Letizia Di Bella; Assimina Antonarakou; George Anastasakis

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2019.104539

Quantitative data on latest-quaternary benthic foraminiferal assemblages in the South Evoikos Gulf semi-enclosed basin (central Aegean, Greece)

Data Brief. 2019 Sep 19:26:104539. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2019.104539. eCollection 2019 Oct.

Authors

Markella Asimina Louvari¹, Hara Drinia¹, George Kontakiotis¹, Letizia Di Bella², Assimina Antonarakou¹, George Anastasakis¹

Affiliations

¹ Section of Historical Geology and Palaeontology, Department of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, Zografou, 15784, Greece.
² Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sapienza Università di Roma, P.le A. Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy.

Abstract

We herein present an original high-resolution dataset on the Late Pleistocene to Holocene (>15.17 ka BP) benthic foraminiferal record of two continuous sediment cores (DEH 5 and DEH 1), drilled from the shallow (max. depth ∼75 m) semi-enclosed basin of South Evoikos Gulf (central Aegean, Greece). Owing to its particular configuration, this marginal setting has been heavily affected by the latest-glacial to modern-interglacial sea-level and climate oscillations that left clear imprints on the benthic foraminiferal community. Our data comprise quantitative information of the downcore faunal distribution (raw species counts and relative abundances), diversity measurements, simplified datasets used for clustering analysis and calibrated age spans. This material can be efficiently utilized in any comparative or synthetic future study on the reconstruction of the latest-Quaternary palaeoceanographic (palaeobathymetric, sea-level) and palaeoenvironmental evolution of the Mediterranean shelf. The present data article is associated with the research article "Impact of latest-glacial to Holocene sea-level oscillations on central Aegean shelf ecosystems: A benthic foraminiferal palaeoenvironmental assessment of South Evoikos Gulf, Greece" by Louvari et al. (2019).

Keywords: Benthic foraminifera; Central Aegean sea; Eastern Mediterranean; Palaeoenvironments; Quaternary; Sea level changes; Semi-enclosed seas; Shelf ecosystem disturbance.