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

这一合作项目将根据地层学数据中记录的轨道强迫古气候周期，汇编中生代(6500万至2.51亿年前)的连续天文时标(ATS)。这一结果应该会使对广泛的地球系统过程的速度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伙伴协调，并将利用国际地层学委员会白垩纪、侏罗纪和三叠纪小组委员会的专门知识。宏伟的“团队”目标是将现在几乎完成的新生代(0到6500万年前)的ATS扩展到涵盖过去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程度、不同区域记录的重复以及对地磁极性特征和综合生物地层学和化学地层学的高分辨率校准。为协助这一科学，将建立一个普遍可用的信号处理工具箱，使旋回地层学研究以及许多其他地球科学领域中使用的领先统计时间序列技术现代化和统一起来。重建的ATS的数字年龄将与其他测年技术结合NSF的EARTHTIME项目进行相互校准。所有数据和工具都将被记录下来，并通过多个NSF公共数据库系统进行访问，包括Geon、Chronos、PaleoStrat、PBDB等。该项目实现了正在进行的一项全球社区倡议，该倡议旨在为过去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.