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Salinity effects on the Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca in starfish skeletons and the echinoderm relevance for paleoenvironmental reconstructions

¹ Laboratoire de Biologie Marine (CP 160/15), Université Libre de Bruxelles, 50 avenue F.D. Roosevelt, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
² Département des Invertébrés, Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, 29 rue Vautier, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
³ Section de Minéralogie, Pétrographie et Géochimie, Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale, 13 Leuvensesteenweg, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium

Correspondence: *E-mail: phdubois{at}ulb.ac.be.

Skeletal Mg/Ca ratios of well-preserved fossil echinoderms have been used to reconstruct past Mg/Ca ratio in seawater up to the Phanerozoic, taking into account the known temperature effect on this ratio. This study investigates the effects of salinity and growth rate on Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca ratios in starfish calcite skeletons grown in experimental conditions. Both ratios are not related to growth rate: on the contrary, both are positively related to salinity. This effect induces an error on the reconstructed Mg/Ca ratio in seawater that may reach 46%. An intriguing inverse relation between skeletal Sr/Ca ratio and temperature was recorded. The salinity effects are presumably due to physiological regulation processes.