Integrated High-Resolution Cretaceous Stratigraphy & Basin Analysis

加拿大西部平原下约1亿年前的白垩纪岩石具有全球意义，因为它们提供了白垩纪气候和海平面变化的最完整记录之一。来自石油和天然气钻孔的丰富记录使我们能够非常详细地绘制岩层图，重建古代海岸线、河流、三角洲和泛滥平原。从我们的地图上得到的最有趣的结果之一是，海平面在大约20,000到400,000年的时间尺度上上下波动了5-20米。从逻辑上讲，这种变化最多地归因于南极大陆适度冰盖的增长和融化。然而，这与白垩纪气候的流行概念相反，白垩纪气候是一个温室、无冰的世界，大气中的二氧化碳水平非常高。我们来自加拿大西部的研究结果促使我们与加拿大、英国、美国、捷克和波兰的科学家合作，研究古气候、高精度辐射测年、生物地层学和层序地层对比，试图证明在加拿大观察到的海平面变化是全球范围的，证明这将极大地支持南极冰盖消长的论点，并引起对“白垩纪温室”性质的认真反思。

Approximately one hundred million year old Cretaceous rocks beneath the Plains of western Canada are globally-significant because they provide one of the most complete records of Cretaceous climate and sea-level change. Abundant records from oil and gas boreholes allow us to map rock layers in great detail, reconstructing ancient shorelines, rivers, deltas and flood- plains. One of the most interesting results coming from our mapping is that sea-level oscillated up and down by perhaps 5-20 m on time-scales of about 20,000 to 400,000 yrs. Such changes are most logically attributed to the growth and melting of modest ice-caps on the Antarctic continent. This however is contrary to the popular conception of the Cretaceous climate as being a 'greenhouse', ice-free world with very high atmospheric CO2 levels. Our results from western Canada have led us to collaborate with scientists in Canada, the UK, US, Czech Republic and Poland to study paleoclimate, high-precision radiometric dating, biostratigraphic and sequence-stratigraphic correlation in an attempt to demonstrate that sea-level changes observed in Canada are of global extent, - proof of which would greatly strengthen the argument for waxing and waning Antarctic ice caps, and cause serious re-thinking of the nature of the 'Cretaceous greenhouse'.