Large temperature drop across the Eocene–Oligocene transition in central North America

Alessandro Zanazzi, Matthew J. Kohn (), Bruce J. MacFadden and Dennis O. Terry
Additional contact information
Alessandro Zanazzi: University of South Carolina
Matthew J. Kohn: University of South Carolina
Bruce J. MacFadden: University of Florida
Dennis O. Terry: Temple University

Nature, 2007, vol. 445, issue 7128, 639-642

Abstract: Local climate goes global The Eocene–Oligocene transition, about 33.5 million years ago, was a major global climate event. The end of the Eocene was unusually warm with no significant ice on Antarctica but the Oligocene saw the arrival of a permanent Antarctic ice-sheet. Two papers this week relate to the continental effects of this global change. Dupont-Nivet et al. examined sedimentary records from the Tibetan plateau and find a drop in atmospheric water, which caused cooling and aridification coincident with Antarctic cooling. Previous studies attributed this phenomenon to the rapid uplift of the Tibetan plateau, but this new work suggests that regional Tibetan climate was influenced by global events. In an unrelated paper on the same climate transition, Zanazzi et al. explore the cooling in North America at the time. Using stable isotope measurements from fossil teeth and bones to create a proxy temperature record, they find a large drop in mean annual temperature of 8.2 °C — a greater fall than seen in the oceans. This continental transition may explain why many cold-blooded reptiles and amphibians became extinct whereas mammals — able to regulate their body temperature — escaped relatively unscathed.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05551 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:445:y:2007:i:7128:d:10.1038_nature05551

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature05551

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().