Marine isotope stages

Robinson LF, Henderson GM, Slowey NC (2002) U-Th dating of marine isotope stage 7 in Bahamas slope sediments. Earth Planet Sci Lett 196 175-187... 

Roberts MS, Smart PL, Hawkesworth CJ, Perkins WT, Pearee NJP (1999). Trace element variations in coeval Holocene speleothems from GB Cave, southwest England. The Holocene 9 138-139 Robinson LF, Henderson GM, Slowey NC (2002) U-Th dating of marine isotope stage 7 in Bahamas slope sediments. Earth Planet Sci Lett 196 175-187... 

Stirhng C., Esat T., Lambeck K., McCulloch M., Blake G., Lee D.-C., and HaUiday A. (2001) Orbital forcing of the marine isotope stage 9 interglacial. Science 291, 290—293. 

Figure 5. Th-U ages of calcite speleothems from Spannagel Cave (arrows) superimposed on the marine oxygen isotope curve (SPECMAP) to facilitate correlation with the marine isotope stages (MIS). Two Spannagel samples yielded dates > 350 kyr.

Because of the inherent errors, all of these estimates overlap. The principal value of the LP6 estimate is that it limits the lower time range of possible ages. If we assume that calcite growth began within a few thousand years of ice retreat, then termination V in northern Norway occurred at -424 ka, very close to the SPECMAP estimate. This supports the conclusion from the 1999 workshop on Marine Isotope Stage 11 (Poore et al, 1999) that the SPECMAP time scale appears to represent the best model for dating MISll. 

Figure 8. Tentative correlation of NG 5 0 values relative to the GRIP ice core (dotted lines)(Johnsen et al., 1993) and SPECMAP (Imbrie et al., 1984) stacked marine 5 0 records for parts of MIS 7. The speleothem isotopes are plotted relative to distance from base. The dated interval has been lined up with the compared chronology. Bars on the date represents the vertical sampling range. The marine isotope stage number is indicated on the SPECMAP curve.

Here we present a new synthesis of scattered paleontological data from the West Indies dating from the Late Quaternary, in particular, marine isotope stage (MIS) 5, and an interpretation of the paleoenvironmental significance of their temporal distribution and of the characteristics of the sediments in which they occur. 

Worthy Park I Cave, Jamaica (Fig lb), is very similar to Wallingford Roadside Cave. The fossil-bearing deposit is an indurated clay plastered onto the walls of the entrance chamber, containing bones of Clidomys together with remains of freshwater turtle and frogs. The deposit is partially overlain with a flowstone that has yielded a U/Th age of 174 +13, -12 ka, which places it in marine isotope stage 6 (McFarlane et al., 1998). 

Fig. 4.18 Alkenone-based sea-surface temperature (SST) reconstruction of two sediment sections from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Holes 1017B (Southern California, 50 km west of Point Arguello) and 1019C (Northern California, 60 km west of Crescent City in the Eel River Basin) on the California continental margin (after Mangelsdorf et al. 2000) compared to the global 5 0 chronostratigraphy (SPECMAP after Martinson et al. 1987). MIS = Marine isotope stage.

Fig. 17.31 The history of temperature fluctuations based on the isotope composition of oxygen and hydrogen in the ice core drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) at Concordia Station on Dome C (75°06 S, 123°21 SE) is closely correlated with the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the ice, both of which can be indexed to the marine isotope stages in Fig. 17.30. The correlation of these parameters confirms the scope of the chmate fluctuations which include nine cold spells that terminated abruptly during the Pleistocene Epoch (i.e., Tj-Tjj, etc.). The temperature profile (black curve) is based on measurements of 6D and was plotted on the EDC3...

Fig. 17.32 The concentrations of methane in ice of the Dome-C core (EPICA) between 380 x 10 years and 650x10 years in the past vary in-step with the 5D values and hence with the average annual surface temperatures at Dome C. The warm and cold climatic intervals are identified by the MIS (marine isotope stages) numbers from Fig. 17.30 where up means warm and down means cold. The profile of nitrous oxide concentrations also mirrors the fluctuations of 6D. Data for the upper part of the core...

Vermeersch, P.M. (2005) European population changes during marine isotope stages 2 and 3. Quaternary International, 137 77-85. 

The GRIP 8 0 profile has been converted to a climatic temperature signal by using the calibration from Fig. 3. The resulting temperature history is shown in Fig. 9 as deviations from the present Summit temperature corrected for past elevation changes. The correlation to die marine isotope stages (MIS) is marked to die right. 

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