BY STEVE DRURY

PUBLISHED ON May 20, 2020

The Cenozoic Era was a period of fundamental change in the outer part of the Earth system. It culminated in the greatest climatic cooling since the Permian Period, during which upright apes emerged between 6 to 10 Ma ago.

The most decisive part of hominin evolution – the appearance of our own genus Homo –took place in the last 2.5 Ma that saw icecaps plastered over both polar regions and repeated pulses of major climate upheaval that dramatically affected all parts of the continents.

Whereas the Mesozoic was dominated by reptiles, most famously the dinosaurs, the Cenozoic is rightly known as the age of mammals and of birds. The flowering plants, especially grasses, also transformed terrestrial ecosystems.

The background to what has become ‘our time’ is not only climate change, but massive shifts in sea level and the outlines of the continents.

For more than two decades many palaeoclimatologists have focused on the Cenozoic, gathering data using a variety of rapidly advancing technologies from a growing number of sites, in sediments from the continents and the ocean floor. One problem has been correlating all this global data precisely, coming as it does from many incomplete sedimentary sequences dotted around the planet.

A great deal of basic information has come from the petroleum industry, which, of course, has continually eyed sedimentary rocks as the source of hydrocarbons through the 20^th century. It was seismic reflection surveying that first gave clues to global ups and downs of sea level from onlaps and offlaps of strata that are visible on seismic sections, amplified by sequence stratigraphy.

Six geoscientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA have blended oil-industry archives with academic research to produce the first fully calibrated, comprehensive record of the Cenozoic (Miller, K.G. et al. 2020. Cenozoic sea-level and cryospheric evolution from deep-sea geochemical and continental margin records.  Science Advances, v. 6, article eaaz1346; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1346).

Latest palaeoclimate data for the Cenozoic Era. A oxygen-isotope data from benthic foraminifera (pale blue = polar icecaps, green = ice-free, pink – hothouse); B estimated mean sea-surface temperature from the calcium/magnesium ratio in Pacific Ocean cores; C variation in global mean sea level estimated from A and corrected for changes in the density of seawater due to water temperature (B); D atmospheric CO2 variations estimated using various proxies – see top right box.  (Credit: Miller et al. 2020; Fig. 1

Fluctuations in the proportion of ¹⁸O (δ¹⁸O) in the tests of foraminifera that lived in deep water are the key to global changes in sea level  and point to the influence of glacial ice accumulating on land (see Cooling sets in: Stepping Stones, Chapter 17). This is because glaciers are made from water that has evaporated from the oceans. When this happens, water that incorporates the lighter ¹⁶O isotope evaporates more easily and becomes enriched in atmospheric water vapour. When this water falls as snow that accumulates on land to form ice, the oceans are slightly enriched in the heavier ¹⁸O: δ¹⁸O incorporated into the shelly material of organism dwelling in the deep ocean increases at levels of a few parts per thousand. Conversely, their δ¹⁸O decreases when huge ice caps melt (A on the figure).

The oxygen isotope records from fossils in ocean floor sediments give a far more precise impression of fluctuating sea level than do seismic sections and sequence stratigraphy of sedimentary rocks that interest the oil industry. But it is an ‘impression’, because other factors affect sea level.

Not only the global volume of ocean water is involved: the volume of the ocean basins changes too. This can occur because of changes in the rate of sea-floor spreading: when that is fast the hot new oceanic lithosphere is less dense and so buoys-up part of the ocean floor to drive sea level upwards. Slow spreading does the converse, as more lithosphere cools and sinks slightly.

Another factor is the changing rate of marine sedimentation of material eroded from the continents. That fills ocean basins to some extent, again displacing the water upwards. When sediments are compacted as they become more deeply buried that has an effect too, to increase basin volume and result in sea-level fall. Oil industry geoscientists have attempted to allow for these long-term, slow mechanisms, to give a more accurate sea-level record.

Yet there is another important factor: the density and thus volume of ocean water changes with temperature. The warmer it is the greater the volume of ocean water and the higher is sea level. This is where academic work comes in handy. Two common elements that are dissolved in ocean water are magnesium and calcium. They also occur in the carbonate tests of the same deep-water forams that are used for oxygen-isotope measurements. It turns out that the warmer the water is the more magnesium enters the foram tests, and vice versa: their Mg/Ca ratio is a reliable proxy for mean ocean temperature and can be measured easily, centimetre-by-centimetre through cores. Kenneth Miller and colleagues have used this with the oxygen isotope proxy for land-ice volume to correct the sea-level record.

The Cenozoic ocean temperature record (B on the figure) is, in itself, interesting. It reveals far more large fluctuations than previously thought, especially in the Palaeocene and early Eocene. Yet, overall, the trend is one of steady cooling compared with the sudden shifts in δ¹⁸O that mark the onset of the Antarctic ice cap at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary around 34 Ma ago, and the apparent, temporary emergence from ‘ice-house conditions in the Middle Miocene. Also, sea level corrected for ocean temperature effects (C on the figure) suggests that for much of the Cenozoic sea level was lower than expected; i.e. it rarely exceeded 60 m above the current level, which is that expected when no substantial mass of  land ice exists.

The other important compilation made by Miller et al. is that of the CO₂ content of the atmosphere estimated using six different proxies. It is a lot more fuzzy than the oceanic records because the proxies are not precise. Nevertheless, it is interesting. The current, partly anthropogenic level of around 400 parts per million (ppm) is not unique. In fact from 55 to 23 Ma it was consistently above this ‘Anthropocene’ level, peaking at twice that level at the end of the Eocene. That’s odd, because it doesn’t tally with the oxygen isotopes that indicate the onset of large scale Antarctic glaciation shortly afterwards.

In fact most of the climatic highlights shown by A on the figure are not reflected in the Cenozoic history of the most influential greenhouse gas. In the short term of glacial-interglacial cycles during the late Pleistocene, atmospheric CO₂ levels are very closely related to fluctuations of land-ice volume. In the 65 Ma of the Cenozoic such a link is hard to argue for. There are more puzzles than revelations in this otherwise major addition to palaeoclimatology.

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Thank you to Steve Drury for permission to share his article and to Bernie Bell for sending it.