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Science 13 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5515, pp. 274 - 278
DOI: 10.1126/science.1058288
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Reports

Climate Response to Orbital Forcing Across the Oligocene-Miocene Boundary

James C. Zachos,1* Nicholas J. Shackleton,2 Justin S. Revenaugh,1 Heiko Pälike,2 Benjamin P. Flower3

Spectral analyses of an uninterrupted 5.5-million-year (My)-long chronology of late Oligocene-early Miocene climate and ocean carbon chemistry from two deep-sea cores recovered in the western equatorial Atlantic reveal variance concentrated at all Milankovitch frequencies. Exceptional spectral power in climate is recorded at the 406-thousand-year (ky) period eccentricity band over a 3.4-million-year period [20 to 23.4 My ago (Ma)] as well as in the 125- and 95-ky bands over a 1.3-million-year period (21.7 to 23.0 Ma) of suspected low greenhouse gas levels. Moreover, a major transient glaciation at the epoch boundary (~23 Ma), Mi-1, corresponds with a rare orbital congruence involving obliquity and eccentricity. The anomaly, which consists of low-amplitude variance in obliquity (a node) and a minimum in eccentricity, results in an extended period (~200 ky) of low seasonality orbits favorable to ice-sheet expansion on Antarctica.

1 Earth Sciences Department, Center for Dynamics and Evolution of the Land-Sea Interface, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
2 Godwin Laboratory for Quaternary Studies, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 3SA, UK.
3 College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jzachos{at}es.ucsc.edu

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