Scientific Reports (Aug 2021)

Insolation-paced sea level and sediment flux during the early Pleistocene in Southeast Asia

  • Romain Vaucher,
  • Shahin E. Dashtgard,
  • Chorng-Shern Horng,
  • Christian Zeeden,
  • Antoine Dillinger,
  • Yu-Yen Pan,
  • Romy A. Setiaji,
  • Wen-Rong Chi,
  • Ludvig Löwemark

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-96372-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

Read online

Abstract Global marine archives from the early Pleistocene indicate that glacial-interglacial cycles, and their corresponding sea-level cycles, have predominantly a periodicity of ~ 41 kyrs driven by Earth’s obliquity. Here, we present a clastic shallow-marine record from the early Pleistocene in Southeast Asia (Cholan Formation, Taiwan). The studied strata comprise stacked cyclic successions deposited in offshore to nearshore environments in the paleo-Taiwan Strait. The stratigraphy was compared to both a δ18O isotope record of benthic foraminifera and orbital parameters driving insolation at the time of deposition. Analyses indicate a strong correlation between depositional cycles and Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, which is precession-dominated with an obliquity component. Our results represent geological evidence of precession-dominated sea-level fluctuations during the early Pleistocene, independent of a global ice-volume proxy. Preservation of this signal is possible due to the high-accommodation creation and high-sedimentation rate in the basin enhancing the completeness of the stratigraphic record.