Patty Standring

Patty is a Peter Buck Deep Time Fellow researching changes in the ocean in Earth's history using tiny microfossils called foraminifera. These single-celled organisms create beautiful shells that get preserved in marine sediments. Patty uses the geochemistry of the shells and the ecology of foraminifera to study changes in ocean conditions and circulation through time, and how it relates to changes in the climate and marine ecosystems. Patty's previous research used foraminifera to study changes in ocean circulation in the Gulf of Mexico and western South Atlantic Ocean approximately 34 million years ago, to help us understand how modern global thermohaline circulation developed. Her current research uses deep-sea sediments from International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 401 in the Alboran Basin in the western Mediterranean Sea to study an event called the Messinian Salinity Crisis. About 6 million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic Ocean for approximately 640,000 years. This limited circulation throughout the basin, creating extremely salty, low-oxygen conditions for marine life throughout the sea. The connection with the Atlantic Ocean was reestablished with the opening of the Gibraltar Strait in a castatrophic reflooding of the Mediterranean. Patty is interested how and when the Mediterranean Sea was restricted, and how that impacted foraminifera living in the western Mediterranean Sea. For more information about this type of research, check out the section on Scientific Ocean Drilling in the Oceans Hall at the National Museum of Natural History (look for the model of the research ship D/V Chikyu). In her profile photo, Patty is sampling sediment from a deep-sea sediment core from Expedition 401 at the Bremen Core Repository in Bremen, Germany.

• Ph.D. in Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, 2025
• B.S. in Geological Sciences (Geophysics), University of Texas at Austin, 2020
• A.A. in Persian-Afghan (Dari), Defense Language Institute, 2015

Foraminifera

• Affiliated with Hupp Lab at George Mason University

paleoceanography, microfossils, foraminifera, ocean circulation

• R. Flecker, E. Ducassou, T. Williams, U. Amarathunga, B. Balestra, M.A. Berke, C.L. Blättler, S. Chin, M.
  Das, K. Egawa, N. Fabregas, S.J. Feakins, S.C. George, F.J. Hernández-Molina, W. Krijgsman, Z. Li, J. Liu, D. Noto, F. Raad, F.J. Rodríguez-Tovar, F.J. Sierro, P. Standring, J. Stine, E. Tanaka, M. Teixeira, X. Xu, S. Yin, and M.Z. Yousfi. (2025). Expedition 401 Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.14379/iodp.proc.401.2025
• Standring P., Lowery, C., Burstein, J., Swartz, J., Goff, J., Gulick, S.P.S. (2024) Foraminiferal Analysis of
  Holocene Sea Level Rise within Trinity River Incised Valley, Offshore Galveston Bay, Texas. Marine
  Geology. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5XG91
• Lowery, C., Perez Cruz, L., Urrutia Fucugauchi, J., Wei, J., Austin, J., Standring, P. (2024) Seismic
  Stratigraphy of Contourite Drift Deposits Associated with the Loop Current on the Eastern Campeche Bank, Gulf of Mexico. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023PA004701
• Burstein J., Goff, J., Gulick, S.P.S., Lowery, C., Standring, P., Swartz, J. (2022) Tracking Barrier Island
  Response to Holocene Sea-Level Rise: High Resolution of Estuarine Sediments in Trinity River
  Paleovalley. Marine Geology, 106951, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2022.106951.
• Standring, P., Lowery, C., Martindale, R. (in review) Investigating deep ocean circulation change in the southern Gulf of Mexico during the Eocene-Oligocene Transition. Submitted to Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, preprint DOI: 10.22541/essoar.175309032.22357002/v1
• Standring, P., Chin, S., Raad, F., Billy, I., Li, Z., Mulligan, M., Noto, D., Stine, J., Teixeira, M., Xu, X., Yeon,
  J., Yousfi, M.Z., Flecker, R., Ducassou, E., Williams, T., and Expedition 401 Science Party (in review) X-
  ray fluorescence scanning of sediment cores, IODP Expedition 401 Site U1611, Mediterranean-Atlantic Gateway Exchange. Submitted to IODP Publications.