The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change
Kenneth G. Miller,1*
Michelle A. Kominz,2
James V. Browning,1
James D. Wright,1
Gregory S. Mountain,1,3
Miriam E. Katz,1
Peter J. Sugarman,4
Benjamin S. Cramer,1,5
Nicholas Christie-Blick,3
Stephen F. Pekar3,6
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 104- to 106-year scale, but a link between oxygen isotope and sea level on the 107-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).
1 Department of Geological Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
2 Department of Geosciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008–5150, USA.
3 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.
4 New Jersey Geological Survey, Post Office Box 427, Trenton, NJ 08625, USA.
5 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403–1272, USA.
6 School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11367, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed: kgm{at}rci.rutgers.edu
