Journal article
Speleothem climate records from deep time? Exploring the potential with an example from the Permian
J Woodhead, R Reisz, D Fox, R Drysdale, J Hellstrom, R Maas, H Cheng, RL Edwards
Geology | Published : 2010
DOI: 10.1130/G30354.1
Abstract
Speleothems are well-proven archives of terrestrial climate variation, recording mean temperature, rainfall, and surface vegetation data at subannual to millennial resolution. They also form within the generally stable environment of caves, and thus may remain remarkably well preserved for many millions of years and, most important, can be dated radiometrically to provide robust chronologies that do not rely on orbital tuning, ice-flow modeling, or estimates of sediment deposition rates. The recent adaptation of the U-Pb dating technique to speleothems has greatly extended their potential as paleoclimate recorders back into the more distant geological past, well beyond the ~500 k.y. limit pr..
View full abstractGrants
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the staff of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History for their continued and enthusiastic support and, in particular, Bill May and Roger Burkhalter for assistance with some of the materials used in this study. We also thank the Dolese Brothers Limestone Quarry for access to the locality, Alan Greig for assistance with the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry analyses, and Silvia Frisia for advice on the interpretation of speleothem fabrics. This research was supported by a Discovery Grant (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) to Reisz and Australian Research Council funding to Woodhead.