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Anatomy of a eustatic event during the Turonian (Late Cretaceous) hot greenhouse climate

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  • SPECIAL TOPIC: Cretaceous greenhouse palaeoclimate and sea-level changes
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Abstract

Sequence stratigraphic studies consider relative change in sea level (as regulated by eustasy, local tectonics and sediment supply) as the main builder of the stratigraphic record. Eustasy has generally been considered as a consequence of the growth and decay of continental ice sheets that would explain large, rapid changes in sea level, even during periods of relative global climatic warmth. However, such a mechanism has become increasingly difficult to envision during times of extreme global warmth such as the Turonian, when the equator-to-pole temperature gradient was very low and the presence of polar ice seems improbable. This paper investigates the timing and extent of sea level falls during the late Cenomanian through Turonian, especially the largest of those events, sequence boundary KTu4, which occurred during the middle to late Turonian peak of the Cretaceous hot greenhouse climate. We conclude that the amplitude of the widespread third-order sea level fall in the middle Turonian that is centered at ~91.8 Ma varies at different locations depending on the influence of dynamic topography on local tectonics and regional climatic conditions. Ice volume variations seem unlikely as a mechanism for controlling sea level at this time. However, this causal factor cannot be ruled out completely since Antarctic highlands (if they existed in the Late Cretaceous) could sequester enough water as ice to cause eustatic falls. To ascertain this requires detailed tomographic imaging of Antarctica, followed by geodynamic modeling, to determine whether high plateaus could have existed to accumulate ephemeral ice sheets. Other mechanisms for sea level change, such as transference between ground water (a small amplitude shorter time scale effect) and the ocean and entrainment and release of water from the mantle to the oceanic reservoir (a potentially large amplitude and longer time scale process), are intriguing and need to be explored further to prove their efficacy at third-order time scales.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to the organizers and hosts of the IGCP 609 International Workshop on Climate and Environmental Evolution in the Mesozoic Greenhouse World, held in Nanjing, China from 5–11 September 2015, for putting together a highly stimulating and most enjoyable meeting. The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers for their contributions toward improvement of this paper. This paper is a contribution to IGCP Project 609 “Climate-environmental deteriorations during greenhouse phases: Causes and consequences of short-term Cretaceous sea-level changes”.

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  1. Department of Paleobiology, MRC-121, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D C, 20013, USA

    Bilal U. Haq & Brian T. Huber

  2. Sorbonne, ISTEP Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris, 75005, France

    Bilal U. Haq

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  1. Bilal U. Haq
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Correspondence to Brian T. Huber.

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Haq, B.U., Huber, B.T. Anatomy of a eustatic event during the Turonian (Late Cretaceous) hot greenhouse climate. Sci. China Earth Sci. 60, 20–29 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-016-0166-y

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