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Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(5), 2014

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5194

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Evidence for global cooling in the Late Cretaceous

Journal article published in 2014 by Christian Linnert, Stuart A. Robinson ORCID, Jackie A. Lees, Paul R. Bown, Irene Pérez-Rodríguez, Maria Rose Petrizzo ORCID, Francesca Falzoni, Kate Littler, José Antonio Arz, Ernest Ee Russell
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

AbstractThe 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 (TEX86), 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 <~28 °C during the Maastrichtian. The overall stratigraphic trend is remarkably similar to records of high-latitude SSTs and bottom-water temperatures, suggesting that the cooling pattern was global rather than regional and, therefore, driven predominantly by declining atmospheric pCO2 levels.