IODP Drilling of the “Shackleton Sites” on the Iberian Margin: A Plio-Pleistocene Marine Reference Section of Millennial-Scale Climate Change

Few marine sediment cores have played such a pivotal role in paleoclimate research as those recovered from the Portuguese Margin, including MD95-2039 to MD95-2042 (hereafter referred to as the “Shackleton sites”) (Fig. 1). These cores preserve a high-fidelity record of millennial-scale climate varia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific Drilling
Main Authors: Henrique Duarte, Luis Batista, Gabriella Carrara, Fatima Abrantes, David Hodell
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.2204/iodp.sd.9.10.2010
https://doaj.org/article/e46861fba2624f4b9c1f7dc7f227e761
Description
Summary:Few marine sediment cores have played such a pivotal role in paleoclimate research as those recovered from the Portuguese Margin, including MD95-2039 to MD95-2042 (hereafter referred to as the “Shackleton sites”) (Fig. 1). These cores preserve a high-fidelity record of millennial-scale climate variability for the last several glacial cycles and can be readily correlated to Greenland ice cores. Moreover, the narrow continental shelf and proximity of the Tagus River results in rapid delivery of terrestrial material to the deep-sea environment, thereby permitting correlation of marine and ice-core records to European terrestrial sequences. Few places exist in the world’s ocean where such marine-ice-terrestrial linkages are possible. Consequently, the Iberian Margin cores have become de facto reference sections for the study of abrupt climate change.