Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmth

Klages, Johann P.; Salzmann, Ulrich; Bickert, Torsten; Hillenbrand, Claus-Dieter ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0240-7317; Gohl, Karsten; Kuhn, Gerhard; Bohaty, Steven M.; Titschack, Jürgen; Müller, Juliane; Frederichs, Thomas; Bauersachs, Thorsten; Ehrmann, Werner; van de Flierdt, Tina; Pereira, Patric Simões; Larter, Robert D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8414-7389; Lohmann, Gerrit; Niezgodzki, Igor; Uenzelmann-Neben, Gabriele; Zundel, Maximilian; Spiegel, Cornelia; Mark, Chris; Chew, David; Francis, Jane E.; Nehrke, Gernot; Schwarz, Florian; Smith, James A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1333-2544; Freudenthal, Tim; Esper, Oliver; Pälike, Heiko; Ronge, Thomas A.; Dziadek, Ricarda. 2020 Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmth. Nature, 580 (7801). 81-86. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Official URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2148-5

Abstract/Summary

The mid-Cretaceous period was one of the warmest intervals of the past 140 million years1,2,3,4,5, driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of around 1,000 parts per million by volume6. In the near absence of proximal geological records from south of the Antarctic Circle, it is disputed whether polar ice could exist under such environmental conditions. Here we use a sedimentary sequence recovered from the West Antarctic shelf—the southernmost Cretaceous record reported so far—and show that a temperate lowland rainforest environment existed at a palaeolatitude of about 82° S during the Turonian–Santonian age (92 to 83 million years ago). This record contains an intact 3-metre-long network of in situ fossil roots embedded in a mudstone matrix containing diverse pollen and spores. A climate model simulation shows that the reconstructed temperate climate at this high latitude requires a combination of both atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 1,120–1,680 parts per million by volume and a vegetated land surface without major Antarctic glaciation, highlighting the important cooling effect exerted by ice albedo under high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5
ISSN:	0028-0836
Date made live:	06 Apr 2020 08:30 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/527403

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5

ISSN:

0028-0836

Date made live:

06 Apr 2020 08:30 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/527403