Near the Eocene's close (∼34 million years ago), the climate system underwent one of the largest shifts in Earth's history: Antarctic terrestrial ice sheets suddenly grew and ocean productivity patterns changed. Previous studies conjectured that poleward penetration of warm, subtropical currents, the East Australian Current (EAC) in particular, caused Eocene Antarctic warmth. Late Eocene opening of an ocean gateway between Australia and Antarctica was conjectured to have disrupted the EAC, cooled Antarctica, and allowed ice sheets to develop. Here we reconstruct Eocene paleoceanographic circulation in the Tasmanian region, using (1) biogeographical distributions of phytoplankton, including data from recently drilled Ocean Drilling Program Leg 189 sites and (2) fully coupled climate model simulations. We find that the EAC did not penetrate to high latitudes and ocean heat transport in the region was not greater than modern. Our results do not support changes in “thermal isolation” as the primary driver of the Eocene‐Oligocene climatic transition.

Tectonic changes that produced a deep Tasmanian Gateway between Australia and Antarctica are widely invoked as the major mechanism for Antarctic cryosphere growth and Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) development during the Eocene/Oligocene (E/O) transition (∼34–33 Ma). Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 189 recovered near‐continuous marine sedimentary records across the E/O transition interval at four sites around Tasmania. These records are largely barren of calcareous microfossils but contain a rich record of siliceous‐ and organic‐walled marine microfossils. In this study we integrate micropaleontological, sedimentological, geochemical, and paleomagnetic data from Site 1172 (East Tasman Plateau) to identify four distinct phases (A–D) in the E/O Tasmanian Gateway deepening that are correlative among ODP Leg 189 sites. Phase A, prior to ∼35.5 Ma: minor initial deepening characterized by a shallow marine prodeltaic setting with initial condensation episodes. Phase B, ∼35.5–33.5 Ma: increased deepening marked by the onset of major glauconitic deposition and inception of energetic bottom‐water currents. Phase C, ∼33.5–30.2 Ma: further deepening to bathyal depths, with episodic erosion by increasingly energetic bottom‐water currents. Phase D, <30.2 Ma: establishment of stable, open‐ocean, warm‐temperate, oligotrophic settings characterized by siliceous‐carbonate ooze deposition. Our combined evidence indicates that this early Oligocene Tasmanian Gateway deepening initially produced an eastward flow of relatively warm surface waters from the Australo‐Antarctic Gulf into the southwestern Pacific Ocean. This “proto‐Leeuwin” current fundamentally differs from previous regional reconstructions of eastward flowing cool water (e.g., a “proto‐ACC”) during the early Oligocene and thereby represents an important new constraint for reconstructing regional‐ to global‐scale dynamics for this major global change event.

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