Collaborative Research: An Astronomical-Calibrated Time Scale for the Mesozoic Era

该合作项目将根据地层数据中记录的轨道强迫古气候周期，为中生代（6500万至2.51亿年前）组装一个连续的天文时标。这些结果应能使对地球系统各种过程的速率和时间的估计至少提高一个数量级。 项目活动将与十多个国际合作伙伴协调，并将利用国际地层委员会白垩纪、侏罗纪和三叠纪小组委员会的专门知识。这个“团队”的宏伟目标是将现在几乎完成的新生代（0到6500万年前）的ATS扩展到过去的2.5亿年。支撑新生代ATS的方法将应用于中生代。重点将放在地层信号与天文模型的拟合度、不同区域记录的复制、地磁极性特征的高分辨率校准以及综合生物和化学地层学上。为了帮助科学，将创建一个通用的信号处理工具箱，以现代化和统一用于旋回地层研究以及许多其他地球科学领域的领先统计时间序列技术。重建ATS的数字年龄将与NSF的EARTHTIME项目一起与其他测年技术进行相互校准。所有数据和工具将通过多个NSF公共数据库系统进行记录和访问，包括GEON，CHRONOS，PaleoStrat，PBDB等。该项目实现了一个正在进行的全球社区倡议，为过去25亿年的地球历史制定一个连续的，天文校准的国际地质时标。

This collaborative project will assemble a continuous Astronomical Time Scale (ATS) for the Mesozoic Era (65 to 251 million years ago) from orbitally forced paleoclimate cycles recorded in stratigraphic data. The results should improve estimates of rates and timings of a wide range of Earth system processes by at least an order of magnitude. Project activities will be coordinated with more than a dozen international partners and will utilize the expertise of the Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic subcommissions of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The grand "team" goal is to extend the ATS, now virtually complete for the Cenozoic Era (0 to 65 million years ago), to encompass the past 250 million years. The methods that underpin the Cenozoic ATS will be applied to the Mesozoic. Emphasis will be placed on the goodness of fit of stratigraphic signals to astronomical models, duplication of records from different regions, and high-resolution calibration to geomagnetic polarity signatures and integrated bio- and chemostratigraphy. To aid in the science, a universally accessible signal processing toolbox will be created to modernize and unite leading statistical time series techniques used in cyclostratigraphic research, as well as in many other geoscience fields. Numerical ages from the reconstructed ATS will be inter-calibrated with other dating techniques in conjunction with NSF's EARTHTIME Project. All data and tools will be documented and accessible through multiple NSF public database systems, including GEON, CHRONOS, PaleoStrat, PBDB, and others. This project fulfills an ongoing global community initiative to develop a continuous, astronomical-calibrated, International Geologic Time Scale for the past quarter billion years of Earth history.