[1] Here we present a high-resolution marine sediment record from the El Niño region off the coast of Peru spanning the last 20,000 years. Sea surface temperature, photosynthetic pigments, and a lithic proxy for El Niño flood events on the continent are used as paleo-El Niño-Southern Oscillation proxy data. The onset of stronger El Niño activity in Peru started around 17,000 calibrated years before the present, which is later than modeling experiments show but contemporaneous with the Heinrich event 1. Maximum El Niño activity occurred during the early and late Holocene, especially during the second and third millennium B.P. The recurrence period of very strong El Niño events is 60-80 years. El Niño events were weak before and during the beginning of the Younger Dryas, during the middle of the Holocene, and during medieval times. The strength of El Niño flood events during the last millennium has positive and negative relationships to global and Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions.

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25Stratigraphic records from northwestern Pangea provide unique insight into global processes 26 that occurred during the Latest Permian Extinction (LPE). We examined a detailed geochemical 27 record of the Festningen Section, Spitsbergen. A stepwise extinction is noted: 1) loss of 28 carbonate shelly macrofauna, 2) loss of siliceous sponges in conjunction with an abrupt change 29 in ichnofabrics as well as dramatic change in the terrestrial environment, and 3) final loss of all 30 trace fossils. We interpret loss of carbonate producers as related to higher latitude shoaling of 31 the lysocline in relationship to building atmospheric CO 2 in higher latitiudes The loss of siliceous 32 sponges is coincident the global LPE event and is related to onset of high loading rates of toxic 33 metals (Hg, As, Co) that we suggest are derived from Siberian Trap eruptions. The final 34 extinction stage is coincident with redox sensitive trace metal and other proxy data which 35 suggest onset of anoxia, after the other extinction events. These results show a remarkable 36 record of progressive environmental deterioration in NW Pangea during the extinction crises. 37

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