Timing and duration of the Last Interglacial: evidence for a restricted interval of widespread coral reef growth

Evidence for the Timing and Duration of the Last Interglacial Period from High-Precision Uranium-Series Ages of Corals on Tectonically Stable Coastlines

“…In this review, only data for corals that are free of recrystallization, have acceptable U contents, and have low 232 Th contents are presented. Within this pool of samples, interpretations about the timing and duration of the last interglacial period are made only from those corals whose back-calculated initial 234 U/ 238 U values are within the range of 1.149 ± 0.004, the same criterion used by Stirling et al (1995Stirling et al ( , 1998. All age uncertainties reported here are 2 sigma.…”

“…from mainland localities and Rottnest Island (Stirling et al, 1995(Stirling et al, , 1998. Stirling et al (1995Stirling et al ( , 1998 emphasize that the main period of last interglacial coral growth was a more restricted interval from ∼128,000 to 121,000 yr B.P. On the Abrolhos Islands, Zhu et al (1993) interpret U-series data from corals to indicate that the last interglacial had a sea level above present from ∼133,000 to 116,000 yr B.P., but by the criteria used here, only a single sample, with an age of 124,000 ± 2000 yr B.P., is acceptable.…”

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

“…(4) There is a broad-scale consensus over the timing and the elevation of the Last Interglacial (MIS 5e) sea-level. During this time period, sea-level was several meters higher than that of today (w4 AE 2 m apsl) and the start of MIS 5e high stand has been dated to w128 ka BP in tectonically stable sites (Chen et al, 1991;Stirling et al, 1995Stirling et al, and, 1998McCulloch and Esat, 2000;Muhs, 2002;Blanchon et al, 2009). Therefore, in tectonically uplifting areas, in order to determine vertical tectonic uplift rates, the elevation and the age of MIS 5e coastlines are used.…”

Records of cosmogenic radionuclides 10Be, 26Al and 36Cl in corals: First studies on coral erosion rates and potential of dating very old corals

“…The last interglacial corals were submerged until sea level fell at the end of MIS 5e. The best estimate for the end of the last interglacial high sea level stand of ϳ ϩ 6 m comes from Australia (Stirling et al, 1998), where there is evidence that coral growth continued, though not robustly, until 116 Ϯ 1 ka. The best evidence for sea level drop after this comes from Barbados, where a coral grew 20 m below modern sea level at 113.1 Ϯ 0.7 kyr (Cutler et al, 2003).…”

“…The new constraint on erosion of the last interglacial terrace in Barbados provides a good example. The youngest coral dated from the last interglacial terrace in Barbados is ϳ124 ka (Gallup et al, 1994;Edwards et al, 1997) and most of the dates are ϳ130 ka, despite the fact that the last interglacial lasted until 116 ka (Stirling et al, 1998). This raises the question whether the effective sample ages have all been shifted to older ages by diagenesis: either younger material was eroded off the top or younger material was eroded off the front of the terrace.…”