Pleistocene Sea Levels from Raised Coral Reefs of Haiti

Abstract

The elevations and ages of a sequence of three uplifted Pleistocene coral reefs on the Northwest Peninsula of Haiti have been determined. With the assignment of a sea level of +6 meters (relative to the present day) at 130,000 years before present and constant uplift of the reefs, the data indicate that sea level stood -10 and -13 meters at 108,000 and 81,000 years before present, respectively. These results are in substantial agreement with those reported for Barbados and New Guinea and support the hypothesis of constant uplift for each area. Sea level data from raised reefs indicate that the interglacial marine oxygen isotope oscillations during oxygen isotope stage 5 are a result of 30 percent ice volume effects and 70 percent temperature effects.

Age Dating and the Orbital Theory of the Ice Ages: Development of a High-Resolution 0 to 300,000-Year Chronostratigraphy

“…Dates for terraces corresponding to our events 5.1 (79,250 yr; stage 5a), 5.33 (103,290 yr; stage 5c), and 5.51-5.53 (122,560-125,190 yr; stage 5e) have been given for New Guinea (Bloom et al, 1974): 82,000, 103,000, and 124,000 yr; Barbados (Fairbanks and Matthews, 1978): 82,000, 105,000, and 125,000 yr; and Haiti (Dodge et al, 1983): 81,000, 108,000, and 130,000 yr. Mix and Ruddiman (1986, Fig . 3) show the last glacial maximum (our event 2.2; 17,850 yr) having a i4C age ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 yr.…”

Late Pleistocene gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) offshore Georgia, U.S.A., and the antiquity of gray whale migration in the North Atlantic Ocean

“…The strong differences in Plio-Pleistocene climatic eustatic sea-level change models (Stocker and Marchal, 2000;Müller et al, 2008;Rohling et al, 2009) show a wide range of possible sea-level ranges during the late Pleistocene. While some models show sea-level at JY Reef to be very similar to that of today (Chabreck, 1988), others show JY Reef to be a dry land (Dodge et al, 1983;Cutler et al, 2003). In all likelihood, based on current models, we think that JY Reef was a shallow shell bed, located very near the shore at the times that the two gray whales died.…”

Comment on “MIS 5a and MIS 3 relatively high sea-level stands on the Hatay-Samandağı coast, Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey”. U. Doğan, A. Koçyiğit, B. Varol, İ. Özer, A. Molodkov, E. Zöhra. Quaternary International (2012), 262, 65–79

“…Here, they cite a recent paper (Gusev and Molodkov, 2012) on substage 5a whereas a considerable number of papers have previously been published on this period. Among them, the paper by of TIMS U-series coral dates from Barbados is of particular interest since they show that MIS 5a may actually consist of two distinct high stands one of which is Their assertion that, "Shorelines related to other substages of MIS 5 can only be seen in areas with fast tectonic uplift", is not accurate as MIS 5 sea-levels are readily observed at moderately uplifting areas such as Barbados (Broecker et al, 1968;Mesolella et al, 1969;Gallup et al, 1994) and Haiti (Dodge et al, 1983;Dumas et al, 2006). Dogan et al frequently refer to a paper by Schellmann et al (2004), and in section 5.1, "MIS 5a and 3 shorelines on the Samandagı coasts" they state: "The numerical ESR-OS ages indicate that in the Eastern Mediterranean, the MIS 5a sealevel high stand occurred at about 72 ka, which is comparable to those on Barbados dated to 74 ka by ESR on corals."…”