Evidence for global cooling in the Late Cretaceous

The Late Cretaceous ‘greenhouse’ world witnessed a transition from one of the warmest climates of the past 140 million years to cooler conditions, yet still without significant continental ice. Low-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) records are a vital piece of evidence required to unravel the c...

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Published in:Nature communications 2014-06, Vol.5 (1), p.4194-4194, Article 4194
Main Authors: Linnert, Christian, Robinson, Stuart A., Lees, Jackie A., Bown, Paul R., Pérez-Rodríguez, Irene, Petrizzo, Maria Rose, Falzoni, Francesca, Littler, Kate, Arz, José Antonio, Russell, Ernest E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/413
704/106/829/2737
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:The Late Cretaceous ‘greenhouse’ world witnessed a transition from one of the warmest climates of the past 140 million years to cooler conditions, yet still without significant continental ice. Low-latitude sea surface temperature (SST) records are a vital piece of evidence required to unravel the cause of Late Cretaceous cooling, but high-quality data remain illusive. Here, using an organic geochemical palaeothermometer (TEX 86 ), we present a record of SSTs for the Campanian–Maastrichtian interval (~83–66 Ma) from hemipelagic sediments deposited on the western North Atlantic shelf. Our record reveals that the North Atlantic at 35 °N was relatively warm in the earliest Campanian, with maximum SSTs of ~35 °C, but experienced significant cooling (~7 °C) after this to
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms5194