2005/11/25 by Kenneth G. Miller, Michelle A. Kominz, James V. Browning +7 · 8 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Marine Biology and Ecology Research
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1116412
openalex publication_date 2005/11/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We review Phanerozoic sea-level changes [543 million years ago (Ma) to the present] on various time scales and present a new sea-level record for the past 100 million years (My). Long-term sea level peaked at 100 +/- 50 meters during the Cretaceous, implying that ocean-crust production rates were much lower than previously inferred. Sea level mirrors oxygen isotope variations, reflecting ice-volume change on the 10(4)- to 10(6)-year scale, but a link between oxygen isotope and sea level on the 10(7)-year scale must be due to temperature changes that we attribute to tectonically controlled carbon dioxide variations. Sea-level change has influenced phytoplankton evolution, ocean chemistry, and the loci of carbonate, organic carbon, and siliciclastic sediment burial. Over the past 100 My, sea-level changes reflect global climate evolution from a time of ephemeral Antarctic ice sheets (100 to 33 Ma), through a time of large ice sheets primarily in Antarctica (33 to 2.5 Ma), to a world with large Antarctic and large, variable Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (2.5 Ma to the present).