Extreme warming of tropical waters during the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum

The Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), ca. 56 Ma, was a major global environmental perturbation attributed to a rapid rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Geochemical records of tropical sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) from the PETM are rare and are typically affect...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geology
Main Authors: Aze, T., Pearson, P. N., Dickson, A. J., Badger, M. P. S., Bown, P. R., Pancost, R. D., Gibbs, S. J., Huber, Brian T., Leng, M. J., Coe, A. L., Cohen, A. S., Foster, G. L.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Planktonic foraminifera
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10088/25482
https://doi.org/10.1130/G35637.1
Description
Summary:The Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), ca. 56 Ma, was a major global environmental perturbation attributed to a rapid rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Geochemical records of tropical sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) from the PETM are rare and are typically affected by post-depositional diagenesis. To circumvent this issue, we have analyzed oxygen isotope ratios (d18O) of single specimens of exceptionally well-preserved planktonic foraminifera from the PETM in Tanzania (~19°S paleolatitude), which yield extremely low d18O, down to 3 °C during the PETM and may have exceeded 40 °C. Calcareous plankton are absent from a large part of the Tanzania PETM record; extreme environmental change may have temporarily caused foraminiferal exclusion. NH-Paleobiology NMNH Peer-reviewed

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