Integrated High-Resolution Cretaceous Stratigraphy & Basin Analysis

加拿大西部平原下大约一亿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大量记录使我们能够非常详细地绘制岩层，重建古代的海岸线、河流、三角洲和洪泛平原。从我们的地图中得出的最有趣的结果之一是，海平面在大约2万到40万年的时间尺度上上下波动了5-20米。这种变化最合乎逻辑地归因于南极大陆上适度冰盖的生长和融化。然而，这与人们普遍认为的白垩纪气候是一个“温室”、无冰、大气中二氧化碳含量非常高的世界的观点相反。我们在加拿大西部取得的成果使我们与加拿大、英国、美国、捷克共和国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测到的海平面变化具有全球范围的影响，这将大大加强南极冰盖消长的论点。并引发对“白垩纪温室”性质的严肃反思。

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'.