Figure 6 illustrates animated evolutionary models for C. leptoporus from the early Miocene to Recent at individual sites (note, that the diagrams can be watched in mono and stereo views; for stereo vision use red-green glasses to experience the -3D effect in an optimal way). -3D glasses are available from Philip Kurzenberger GMBH. The animations are combined with the phylogenetic tree (Figure 7), that was derived from the "morphotype classification" approach in Knappertsbusch (2000). Figure 8 shows composites in mono- and stereo views, where the data from all cores are included to arrive at a global impression of the morphological evolution of C. leptoporus.

These composites demonstrate a cladogenetic event occurred during the Upper Miocene, during which a prominent branch of large morphotypes (morphotype D) developed from morphotype C. A second cladogenetic event occurred during the Upper Miocene to Pliocene leading to the coccoliths of morphotype A, that stratigraphers call C. macintyrei. Note, that coccoliths of morphotypes C, D, and A have large areas of overlap in the bivariate classification scheme of diameters and elements illustrated in Figure 4 and it would not be possible to discriminate between them without additional information. However, these morphotypes are clearly separated from each other by time: when looking at the stratigraphic development of diameters and elements, separation patterns become apparent and morphotype D can easily be separated from morphotype A because of their different phyletic trends during different time intervals. These observations were reported in Knappertsbusch (2000) with the help of two-dimensional contour plots, but clearly, the animated diagrams presented here are more easily understood than the previously published flat diagrams. These patterns possibly indicate true speciation events, and most probably are driven by paleoenvironmental changes. An environmental influence is indicated when the measurements from the southern Indian Ocean (DSDP Site 251) are compared with those from equatorial Indian Ocean DSDP sites 236, 223 and 224 (Figure 9). At the higher latitude site, large coccoliths such as morphotypes A and D appear more frequently than at the low-latitude end. This trend is confirmed in samples from the equatorial Pacific (sample DSDP 572A-3-4, 80cm), North Atlantic (DSDP 366A-3-5, 60cm; V16-205, 779 cm; and ME69-196, 471 cm) and Indian Ocean (DSDP 251-6-2, 110 cm; and DSDP 236-3-1, 120 cm) at an Early Pleistocene (1.8-1.6 Ma) time slice. At this time coccoliths, including the two extinct morphotypes A and B, show significantly higher mean coccolith diameters and mean numbers of elements at high latitudes than in equatorial regions (Figure 10 and Figure 11).

Interestingly, extant representatives of C. leptoporus (morphotypes S, I, L, and F) show an opposite trend with respect to sea-surface temperatures. Here, large cells covered by large coccoliths (i.e. morphotypes L and F) appear to prefer waters with temperatures above the 23ºC isotherm, whereas the smaller morphotypes S and I are cosmopolitan (Knappertsbusch et al. 1997). These observations suggest that a strong environmental component influenced size and coccolith morphology in the evolutionary history of these algae.