Stratigraphic and Geochemical Expression of Early Cretaceous Environmental Change in Arctic Svalbard ...

• Main Author: Vickers, Madeleine Larissa
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Plymouth 2017
• Subjects: Stratigraphy; Palaeoclimate; Geochemistry; FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; Sedimentology; Early Cretaceous; PhD; Arctic; Central Basin; Svalbard
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.24382/923; https://pearl-prod.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/10041

The Arctic is climatically sensitive to global change and therefore climate records from this region are of key importance. Little, however, is known of the state of the Arctic in the traditionally “greenhouse” period of the Cretaceous. Climate conditions are often assumed to have been warm-temperate as evidenced by the presence of conifers and dinosaur trackways on Svalbard and other Arctic localities. However, isotopic evidence for cooling episodes, sequence stratigraphic evidence for interpreted glacio-eustatic sea-level falls, and the presence of more enigmatic deposits such as dropstones and glendonites has led to a re-evaluation of the question of climatic dynamism during the Cretaceous. This project evaluates the climatic and environmental character of Arctic Svalbard during the Early Cretaceous (palaeo-latitude of c. 65 °N), via a multiproxy sedimentological, geochemical, sequence- and chemo- stratigraphic study of Berriasian–Albian strata from the Central Basin of Svalbard. The “outsized clasts” ...