The Phanerozoic record of global sea-level change.
We review Phanerozoic sea-level changes [543 million years ago (Ma) to the present] on various time scales and present a new sea-level record for the past 100 million years (My). Long-term sea level peaked at 100 +/- 50 meters during the Cretaceous, implying that ocean-crust production rates were much lower than previously inferred. Sea level mirrors oxygen isotope variations, reflecting ice-volume change on the 10(4)- to 10(6)-year scale, but a link between oxygen isotope and sea level on the 10(7)-year scale must be due to temperature changes that we attribute to tectonically controlled carbon dioxide variations. Sea-level change has influenced phytoplankton evolution, ocean chemistry, and the loci of carbonate, organic carbon, and siliciclastic sediment burial. Over the past 100 My, sea-level changes reflect global climate evolution from a time of ephemeral Antarctic ice sheets (100 to 33 Ma), through a time of large ice sheets primarily in Antarctica (33 to 2.5 Ma), to a world with large Antarctic and large, variable Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (2.5 Ma to the present).
Miller
Kenneth G
KG
Department of Geological Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA. kgm@rci.rutgers.edu
Kominz
Michelle A
MA
Browning
James V
JV
Wright
James D
JD
Mountain
Gregory S
GS
Katz
Miriam E
ME
Sugarman
Peter J
PJ
Cramer
Benjamin S
BS
Christie-Blick
Nicholas
N
Pekar
Stephen F
SF