The extreme Red Sea and its late Cenozoic shallow water benthic foraminifers

Abstract Semi-enclosed basins are more responsive to climate variations than the global ocean. This is true in particular for the Red Sea as a unique landlocked environment controlled by an interplay of its geographic, tectonic, and climatic features resulting in extreme salinities. Previous studies pointed to extreme salinities reaching > 53 during the low sea-level stands of glacial periods in the last 500 kyr. Yet our knowledge of the late Cenozoic evolution history of the Red Sea as a coral refuge and responses of coral reefs to these extreme salinities is scarce. Benthic foraminifers are key organisms for monitoring environmental changes in any marine setting, both shallow and deep, throughout geological times and to the present day. Here we provide a synthesis of the shallow-water benthic foraminifers that occupy the photic zones of the Red Sea environment based on the published studies, to reassess the variable saline conditions of the Red Sea across its evolution through the late Cenozoic and present-day as recorded by the shallow-water benthic foraminifer communities in association with coral reefs. Our review reveals a lack of information on shallo-water benthic foraminifers and paleoclimate data across the late Cenozoic evolution of the Red Sea encompassing climate shifts are worth being studied as analogs for modern-day and future climates; suggests a pathway to assess the salinity history of the Red Sea by using foraminiferal assemblage shifts.