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Expedition 392 Scientific Prospectus: Agulhas Plateau Cretaceous Climate

“…The proposed Expedition 392 drill sites on Agulhas Plateau and Transkei Basin were located at high latitudes during the Late Cretaceous (65°-58°S; Hay et al, 1999;Sewall et al, 2007) and positioned in the gateway between the newly opening South Atlantic, Southern Ocean, and southern Indian Ocean basins. Recovery of basement and sedimentary sequences from this region and comparison with recent results from Naturaliste Plateau drilled during IODP Expedition 369 (Huber et al, 2018) will significantly advance the understanding of large igneous province (LIP) formation and the evolution of ocean temperature, circulation, and sedimentation patterns during the Cretaceous.…”

“…The warmest sustained greenhouse episode of the past ~150 My occurred during the mid-Cretaceous between ~95 and 80 Ma (e.g., Clarke and Jenkyns, 1999;Friedrich et al, 2012;Huber et al, 2002Huber et al, , 2018. Proxy data and climate models suggest CO 2 levels during this supergreenhouse climate phase may have been as high as 3500 parts per million by volume (ppmv), which then subsequently declined to less than 560 ppmv following the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition at ~34 Ma (Berner et al, 1983;Bice et al, 2006;DeConto and Pollard, 2003;Royer et al, 2004).…”

Ocean Drilling Perspectives on Meteorite Impacts

“…New K-Pg boundary sites from undersampled regions (the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the high latitudes) are essential to reconstruct environmental gradients in the early Paleocene and to understand geographic patterns of recovery and global environmental effects as well as what drives them. IODP Site U1514, on the Naturaliste Plateau on the Southwest Australian margin (Figure 2), drilled in 2017 on Expedition 369 (Huber et al, 2018), is a perfect example of the kind of new site we need to drill-at a high latitude and far from existing K-Pg boundary records.…”