Cyclochronology of the Eocene–Oligocene transition from the Cape Roberts Project-3 core, Victoria Land basin, Antarctica

Abstract

About 34 million years ago, at the Eocene–Oligocene (E–O) transition, Earth's climate underwent a substantial change from relatively ice-free “green house” conditions to a glacial state marked by the establishment of a permanent ice sheet on Antarctica. Our understanding of the Antarctic cryospheric evolution across the E–O climate transition relies on indirect marine geochemical proxies and, hitherto, it has not been possible to reconcile the pattern of inferred ice-sheet growth from these “far-field” proxy records with direct physical evidence of ice sheet behaviour from the proximal Antarctic continental margin. Here we present a correlation of cyclical changes recorded in the CRP-3 drill hole sediment core from the western Ross Sea, that are related to oscillations in the volume of a growing East Antarctic Ice Sheet, with well dated lower latitude records of orbital forcing and climate change across the E–O transition. We evaluate the results in the light of the age model available for the CRP-3A succession. Our cyclostratigraphy developed on the basis of repetitive vertical facies changes and clast peak abundances within sequences matches the floating cyclochronology developed in deep-sea successions for major glacial events. The astrochronological calibration of the CRP-3 succession represents the first high-resolution correlation of direct physical evidence of orbitally controlled glaciation from the Antarctic margin to geochemical records of paleoclimate changes across the E–O climate transition.