MIOCENE FUNGAL SPORES FROM THE AGBADA FORMATION, NIGER DELTA: PRELIMINARY INTERPRETATIONS

The Fungi in a Warmer World project is delineating the utility of fungi as global proxies for paleoecology and paleoclimate across the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO). These studies are permitting identification of global fungal guild changes associated with climate-driven environmental changes. Africa is the last continent to be examined, and unlike other studied regions, to date, published studies of fungi across the MCO do not exist. This omission is due in part to the scarcity of sediments and rocks of the correct age, thus limiting our ability to extend reconstructions of fungal guilds on a global scale. Fungi are abundant and diverse components of palynological preparations from the middle Miocene Agbada Formation in in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Originally noted in a doctoral thesis and several associated publications the 1990’s, these occurrences were used in the establishment of palynological zonations and delineation of depositional environments in the middle Niger Delta. Fungi were especially common in near-shore settings indicative of lagoonal, salt marsh, and possibly mangrove systems. However, the signal they provided was not examined in detail at that time due to reliance on form-generic names, which precluded utilization of the fungal remains as proxies for paleoecology or paleoclimate studies. This re-study of legacy slides uses methods outlined by the Fungi in a Warmer World project to identify significant portions of the fungal assemblage to extant taxa. Of note, many of these taxa are similar or identical to those identified in legacy materials and recently studied exposures of mangrove and related near-shore and on-shore environments in the middle Miocene of Peru. Here, we present a preliminary overview of fungal spore groupings present in core samples taken from the Kolo Creek oilfield in the central Niger Delta, Nigeria.