Because of paleomagnetic inclination error (I error) in sedimentary rocks, we argue that previous estimates of Triassic and Jurassic paleolatitudes of the North American craton have generally been ...too low, the record being derived mostly from sedimentary rocks. Using results from all major cratons, we construct a new composite apparent pole wander (APW) path for Triassic through Paleogene based on 69 paleopoles ranging in age from 243 to 43 Ma. The poles are from igneous rocks and certain sedimentary formations corrected for I error brought into North American coordinates using plate tectonic reconstructions. Key features of the new APW path are a 25° northward progression from 230 to 190 Ma to high latitudes (off northernmost Siberia) where the pole lingers until 160 Ma, a jump to the Aleutians followed by a hook in western Alaska by ∼145 Ma that leads to the 130–60 Ma stillstand, after which the pole moves to its present position. As an example of the application of this new path we use paleomagnetic results to determine that southern Wrangellia and Stikinia (W/S), the two most westerly terranes in the Canadian Cordillera, lay 630 to 1650 km farther south than at present relative to the craton during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. This is consistent with an exotic Tethyan origin as paleontological and mantle geochemical evidences imply. During the Late Triassic through Early Cretaceous, W/S moved northward more slowly than the craton, implying oblique sinistral net convergence over this 130 Myr interval. This was followed by dextral shear in latest Cretaceous through Eocene.
Two recently published analyses make cases for severe bottlenecking of human populations occurring in the late Early Pleistocene, one case at about 0.9 Mya based on a genomic analysis of modern human ...populations and the low number of hominin sites of this age in Africa and the other at about 1.1 Mya based on an age inventory of sites of hominin presence in Eurasia. Both models point to climate change as the bottleneck trigger, albeit manifested at very different times, and have implications for human migrations as a mechanism to elude extinction at bottlenecking. Here, we assess the climatic and chronologic components of these models and suggest that the several hundred-thousand-year difference is largely an artifact of biases in the chronostratigraphic record of Eurasian hominin sites. We suggest that the best available data are consistent with the Galerian hypothesis expanded from Europe to Eurasia as a major migration pulse of fauna including hominins in the late Early Pleistocene as a consequence of the opening of land routes from Africa facilitated by a large sea level drop associated with the first major ice age of the Pleistocene and concurrent with widespread aridity across Africa that occurred during marine isotope stage 22 at ~0.9 Mya. This timing agrees with the independently dated bottleneck from genomic analysis of modern human populations and allows speculations about the relative roles of climate forcing on the survival of hominins.
Sedimentological records provide the only accessible archive for unraveling Earth’s orbital variations in the remote geological past. These variations modulate Earth’s climate system and provide ...essential constraints on gravitational parameters used in solar system modeling. However, geologic documentation of midlatitude response to orbital climate forcing remains poorly resolved compared to that of the low-latitude tropics, especially before 50 Mya, the limit of reliable extrapolation from the present. Here, we compare the climate response to orbital variations in a Late Triassic midlatitude temperate setting in Jameson Land, East Greenland (∼43°N paleolatitude) and the tropical low paleolatitude setting of the Newark Basin, with independent time horizons provided by common magnetostratigraphic boundaries whose timing has been corroborated by uranium-lead (U-Pb) zircon dating in correlative strata on the Colorado Plateau. An integrated cyclostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic age model revealed long-term climate cycles with periods of 850,000 and 1,700,000 y ascribed to the Mars–Earth grand orbital cycles. This indicates a 2:1 resonance between modulation of orbital obliquity and eccentricity variations more than 200 Mya and whose periodicities are inconsistent with astronomical solutions and indicate chaotic diffusion of the solar system. Our findings also demonstrate antiphasing in climate response between low and midlatitudes that has implications for precise global correlation of geological records.
Accurately estimating the paleomagnetic field intensity recorded in terrestrial and planetary materials is the key to understanding dynamo processes. Thellier‐series stepwise‐heating methods with ...partial thermoremanent magnetization (pTRM) checks for alteration are considered the most reliable technique even though pTRM checks are shown to be incapable of detecting the entirety of thermal alteration. We utilize a recently developed multidomain‐correction experiment (or RESET) to monitor thermally induced magnetic property alteration that may happen to the very specimen used in Thellier‐series experiments. We also use rock magnetic property changes to track the physicochemical alteration of fresh companion specimens of Galapagos lavas that were previously used for paleointensity determinations. Our results show that laboratory heating induced thermal alteration of a typical Galapagos lava sample starts to occur at around 500°C. It escaped detection by pTRM checks but was caught by our RESET method.
Plain Language Summary
To date, there has been no way to detect the entirety of thermal alterations that may happen during laboratory heating to specimens used in Thellier‐series paleointensity experiments. This study develops an experimental approach to address this issue.
Key Points
Illustrates in detail the weakness of pTRM checks to detect alteration in Thellier‐series paleointensity experiments
Uses comprehensive stepwise after‐heating rock magnetic property changes to study thermophysicochemical alteration
Proposes a RESET method and CAL check to monitor overall thermal alteration of specimens
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Sharply contrasting climate zonations under high atmospheric
p
CO
2
conditions can exert significant obstacles to the dispersal of land vertebrates across a supercontinent. This is argued to be the ...case in the Triassic for herbivorous sauropodomorph dinosaurs, which were confined to their initial venue in the Southern Hemisphere temperate belt of Pangea for about their first 15 million years. Sauropodomorphs only appear in the fossil record of the Northern Hemisphere temperate belt about 214 million years ago based on a composite magnetostratigraphy of the Fleming Fjord Group in East Greenland. The coincidence in timing within a major dip in atmospheric
p
CO
2
from published paleosol records suggests the dispersal was related to a concomitant attenuation of climate barriers in a greenhouse world.
The earliest dinosaurs (theropods and sauropodomorphs) are found in fossiliferous early Late Triassic strata dated to about 230 million years ago (Ma), mainly in northwestern Argentina and southern Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere temperate belt of what was Gondwana in Pangea. Sauropodomorphs, which are not known for the entire Triassic in then tropical North America, eventually appear 15 million years later in the Northern Hemisphere temperate belt of Laurasia. The Pangea supercontinent was traversable in principle by terrestrial vertebrates, so the main barrier to be surmounted for dispersal between hemispheres was likely to be climatic; in particular, the intense aridity of tropical desert belts and unstable climate in the equatorial humid belt accompanying high atmospheric
p
CO
2
that characterized the Late Triassic. We revisited the chronostratigraphy of the dinosaur-bearing Fleming Fjord Group of central East Greenland and, with additional data, produced a correlation of a detailed magnetostratigraphy from more than 325 m of composite section from two field areas to the age-calibrated astrochronostratigraphic polarity time scale. This age model places the earliest occurrence of sauropodomorphs (
Plateosaurus
) in their northernmost range to ∼214 Ma. The timing is within the 215 to 212 Ma (mid-Norian) window of a major, robust dip in atmospheric
p
CO
2
of uncertain origin but which may have resulted in sufficiently lowered climate barriers that facilitated the initial major dispersal of the herbivorous sauropodomorphs to the temperate belt of the Northern Hemisphere. Indications are that carnivorous theropods may have had dispersals that were less subject to the same climate constraints.
The Newark–Hartford astrochronostratigraphic polarity timescale (APTS) was developed using a theoretically constant 405-kiloyear eccentricity cycle linked to gravitational interactions with ...Jupiter–Venus as a tuning target and provides a major timing calibration for about 30 million years of Late Triassic and earliest Jurassic time. While the 405-ky cycle is both unimodal and the most metronomic of the major orbital cycles thought to pace Earth’s climate in numerical solutions, there has been little empirical confirmation of that behavior, especially back before the limits of orbital solutions at about 50 million years before present. Moreover, the APTS is anchored only at its younger end by U–Pb zircon dates at 201.6 million years before present and could even be missing a number of 405-ky cycles. To test the validity of the dangling APTS and orbital periodicities, we recovered a diagnostic magnetic polarity sequence in the volcaniclastic-bearing Chinle Formation in a scientific drill core fromPetrified Forest National Park (Arizona) that provides an unambiguous correlation to the APTS. New high precision U–Pb detrital zircon dates from the core are indistinguishable from ages predicted by the APTS back to 215 million years before present. The agreement shows that the APTS is continuous and supports a stable 405-kiloyear cycle well beyond theoretical solutions. The validated Newark–Hartford APTS can be used as a robust framework to help differentiate provinciality from global temporal patterns in the ecological rise of early dinosaurs in the Late Triassic, amongst other problems.
India's northward flight and collision with Asia was a major driver of global tectonics in the Cenozoic and, we argue, of atmospheric CO₂ concentration (pCO₂) and thus global climate. Subduction of ...Tethyan oceanic crust with a carpet of carbonate-rich pelagic sediments deposited during transit beneath the high-productivity equatorial belt resulted in a component flux of CO₂ delivery to the atmosphere capable to maintain high pCO₂ levels and warm climate conditions until the decarbonation factory shut down with the collision of Greater India with Asia at the Early Eocene climatic optimum at almost equal to50 Ma. At about this time, the India continent and the highly weatherable Deccan Traps drifted into the equatorial humid belt where uptake of CO₂ by efficient silicate weathering further perturbed the delicate equilibrium between CO₂ input to and removal from the atmosphere toward progressively lower pCO₂ levels, thus marking the onset of a cooling trend over the Middle and Late Eocene that some suggest triggered the rapid expansion of Antarctic ice sheets at around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.
The effects of a large igneous province on the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (Pco₂) are mostly unknown. In this study, we estimate Pco₂ from stable isotopic values of pedogenic ...carbonates interbedded with volcanics of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) in the Newark Basin, eastern North America. We find pre-CAMP Pco₂ values of ~2000 parts per million (ppm), increasing to ~4400 ppm immediately after the first volcanic unit, followed by a steady decrease toward pre-eruptive levels over the subsequent 300 thousand years, a pattern that is repeated after the second and third flow units. We interpret each Pco₂ increase as a direct response to magmatic activity (primary outgassing or contact metamorphism). The systematic decreases in Pco₂ after each magmatic episode probably reflect consumption of atmospheric CO₂ by weathering of silicates, stimulated by fresh CAMP volcanics.
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The Geological Orrery is a network of geological records of orbitally paced climate designed to address the inherent limitations of solutions for planetary orbits beyond 60 million years ago due to ...the chaotic nature of Solar System motion.We use results from two scientific coring experiments in Early Mesozoic continental strata: the Newark Basin Coring Project and the Colorado Plateau Coring Project.We precisely and accurately resolve the secular fundamental frequencies of precession of perihelion of the inner planets and Jupiter for the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic epochs (223–199 million years ago) using the lacustrine record of orbital pacing tuned only to one frequency (1/405,000 years) as a geological interferometer. Excepting Jupiter’s, these frequencies differ significantly from present values as determined using three independent techniques yielding practically the same results. Estimates for the precession of perihelion of the inner planets are robust, reflecting a zircon U–Pb-based age model and internal checks based on the overdetermined origins of the geologically measured frequencies. Furthermore, although not indicative of a correct solution, one numerical solution closely matches the Geological Orrery, with a very low probability of being due to chance. To determine the secular fundamental frequencies of the precession of the nodes of the planets and the important secular resonances with the precession of perihelion, a contemporaneous high-latitude geological archive recording obliquity pacing of climate is needed. These results form a proof of concept of the Geological Orrery and lay out an empirical framework to map the chaotic evolution of the Solar System.
Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread ...of savannah grasslands. New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the discovery of Lomekwi 3, a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site where in situ stone artefacts occur in spatiotemporal association with Pliocene hominin fossils in a wooded palaeoenvironment. The Lomekwi 3 knappers, with a developing understanding of stone's fracture properties, combined core reduction with battering activities. Given the implications of the Lomekwi 3 assemblage for models aiming to converge environmental change, hominin evolution and technological origins, we propose for it the name 'Lomekwian', which predates the Oldowan by 700,000 years and marks a new beginning to the known archaeological record.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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