Mid-Miocene cooling and the extinction of tundra in continental Antarctica
A. R. Lewis,David R. Marchant,Allan C. Ashworth,Lars Hedenäs,Sidney R. Hemming,Jesse V. Johnson,Melanie J. Leng,Malka L. Machlus,Angela E. Newton,J. Ian Raine,Jane K. Willenbring,Mark Williams,Alexander P. Wolfe +12 more
TLDR
The discovery of exceptionally well preserved fossils of lacustrine and terrestrial organisms from the McMurdo Dry Valleys sector of the Transantarctic Mountains are reported, providing novel constraints for the timing and amplitude of middle-Miocene cooling in Antarctica and revealing the ecological legacy of this global climate transition.Abstract:
A major obstacle in understanding the evolution of Cenozoic climate has been the lack of well dated terrestrial evidence from high-latitude, glaciated regions. Here, we report the discovery of exceptionally well preserved fossils of lacustrine and terrestrial organisms from the McMurdo Dry Valleys sector of the Transantarctic Mountains for which we have established a precise radiometric chronology. The fossils, which include diatoms, palynomorphs, mosses, ostracodes, and insects, represent the last vestige of a tundra community that inhabited the mountains before stepped cooling that first brought a full polar climate to Antarctica. Paleoecological analyses, 40Ar/39Ar analyses of associated ash fall, and climate inferences from glaciological modeling together suggest that mean summer temperatures in the region cooled by at least 8°C between 14.07 ± 0.05 Ma and 13.85 ± 0.03 Ma. These results provide novel constraints for the timing and amplitude of middle-Miocene cooling in Antarctica and reveal the ecological legacy of this global climate transition.read more
Citations
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Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations
Tim R Naish,Tim R Naish,Ross D. Powell,Richard H. Levy,Richard H. Levy,Gary S. Wilson,Reed P. Scherer,Franco M Talarico,Lawrence A. Krissek,Frank Niessen,Massimo Pompilio,Terry J. Wilson,Lionel Carter,Robert M. DeConto,Peter Huybers,Robert M. McKay,David Pollard,James Ross,D. Winter,Peter Barrett,Greg H. Browne,Rosemary Cody,Rosemary Cody,Ellen A. Cowan,James S. Crampton,Gavin B. Dunbar,Nelia W. Dunbar,Fabio Florindo,Catalina Gebhardt,Ian J. Graham,M. J. Hannah,Dhiresh Hansaraj,Dhiresh Hansaraj,David M. Harwood,D. Helling,Stuart Henrys,Linda A. Hinnov,Gerhard Kuhn,Philip R. Kyle,Andreas Läufer,P. Maffioli,Diana Magens,Kevin W. Mandernack,William C. McIntosh,C. Millan,Roger H. Morin,Christian Ohneiser,Timothy Paulsen,Davide Persico,Ian Raine,J. Reed,J. Reed,Christina R. Riesselman,Leonardo Sagnotti,Douglas R. Schmitt,Charlotte Sjunneskog,P. Strong,Marco Taviani,S. W. Vogel,T. I. Wilch,Trevor Williams +60 more
TL;DR: A marine glacial record from the upper 600 m of the AND-1B sediment core recovered from beneath the northwest part of the Ross ice shelf is presented and well-dated, ∼40-kyr cyclic variations in ice-sheet extent linked to cycles in insolation influenced by changes in the Earth’s axial tilt (obliquity) during the Pliocene are demonstrated.
Journal ArticleDOI
Antarctic climate change and the environment
Peter Convey,Robert Bindschadler,G. di Prisco,Eberhard Fahrbach,Julian Gutt,Dominic A. Hodgson,Paul Andrew Mayewski,Colin Summerhayes,John Turner +8 more
TL;DR: The Southern Hemisphere climate system varies on timescales from orbital, through millennial to sub-annual, and is closely coupled to other parts of the global climate system as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Late Miocene global cooling and the rise of modern ecosystems
Timothy D Herbert,Kira T Lawrence,Alexandrina Tzanova,Laura C Peterson,Rocio P Caballero-Gill,Christopher S Kelly +5 more
TL;DR: A period of continental aridification and ecosystem change occurred about seven million years ago and a global sea surface temperature reconstruction identifies cooling temperatures and a strengthened meridional temperature gradient at this time.
Journal ArticleDOI
Snowball Earth climate dynamics and Cryogenian geology-geobiology
Paul Hoffman,Paul Hoffman,Dorian S. Abbot,Yosef Ashkenazy,Douglas I. Benn,Jochen J. Brocks,Phoebe Cohen,Grant M. Cox,Grant M. Cox,Jessica R. Creveling,Yannick Donnadieu,Yannick Donnadieu,Douglas H. Erwin,Douglas H. Erwin,Ian J. Fairchild,David Ferreira,Jason C. Goodman,Galen P. Halverson,Malte F. Jansen,Guillaume Le Hir,Gordon D. Love,Francis A. Macdonald,Adam C. Maloof,Camille A. Partin,Gilles Ramstein,Brian E. J. Rose,Catherine V. Rose,Peter M. Sadler,Eli Tziperman,Aiko Voigt,Aiko Voigt,Stephen G. Warren +31 more
TL;DR: Modeling shows that the small thermal inertia of a globally frozen surface reverses the annual mean tropical atmospheric circulation, producing an equatorial desert and net snow and frost accumulation elsewhere, and that the evolutionary legacy of Snowball Earth is perceptible in fossils and living organisms.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years
TL;DR: B/Ca measurements of planktonic foraminifera are used to estimate pCO2, a powerful greenhouse gas believed to be one of the most important determinants of climate, during major climate transitions of the past 20 million years.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Journal ArticleDOI
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a network of seven valley floor automatic meteorological stations during the period 1986 to 2000, with mean annual temperatures ranging from −14.8°C to −30.0°C, depending on the site and period of measurement.
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