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Published Online April 23, 2009
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1168754

Reports

Submitted on November 19, 2008
Accepted on March 30, 2009

Penultimate Deglacial Sea-Level Timing from U/Th Dating of Tahitian Corals

Alex L. Thomas 1*, Gideon M. Henderson 1, Pierre Deschamps 2, Yusuke Yokoyama 3, Andrew J. Mason 1, Edouard Bard 2, Bruno Hamelin 2, Nicolas Durand 2, Gilbert Camoin 2

1 Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK.
2 CEREGE (UMR 6635), Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, IRD, Collège de France, Europole de l’Arbois, BP80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, France.
3 Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan.; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.; Institute for Research on Earth Evolution, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka 237-0061, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Alex L. Thomas , E-mail: alext{at}earth.ox.ac.uk

The timing of sea-level change provides important constraints on the mechanisms driving Earth’s climate between glacial and interglacial states. Fossil corals constrain the timing of past sea level by their suitability for dating and their growth position close to sea level. The coral-derived age for the last deglaciation is consistent with climate change forced by northern hemisphere summer insolation (NHI), but the timing of the penultimate deglaciation is more controversial. Here, we show that sea level during the penultimate deglaciation had risen to {approx}85 m below present sea level (mbsl) by 137 ka, and that it fluctuated on a millennial time scale during deglaciation. This indicates that the penultimate deglaciation occurred earlier with respect to NHI than the last deglacial, initiating when NHI was at a minimum.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Evidence for Obliquity Forcing of Glacial Termination II.
R. N. Drysdale, J. C. Hellstrom, G. Zanchetta, A. E. Fallick, M. F. Sanchez Goni, I. Couchoud, J. McDonald, R. Maas, G. Lohmann, and I. Isola (2009)
Science 325, 1527-1531
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)