Paleoceanography is the scientific study of past ocean states, processes, and variability on geological timescales, using physical, chemical, biological, and isotopic proxies preserved in marine sediments, microfossils, corals, and other archives. It reconstructs parameters such as sea-surface and deep-water temperatures, salinity, circulation patterns, biogeochemical cycles, ice volume, and sea level, often through analyses of stable and radiogenic isotopes, trace metals, and sedimentological characteristics. Paleoceanography is central to understanding ocean–climate feedbacks, carbon cycle dynamics, and the response of the ocean system to external forcings, and it provides critical boundary conditions and validation targets for climate and Earth system models.
The explosion of animal life in Earth's oceans half a billion years ago during and after the Cambrian Period is commonly attributed to a substantial and sustained rise of free oxygen (O2) in seawater. Some researchers even ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 4, 2025
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Some 14,000 years ago, algal blooms in the Southern Ocean helped to massively reduce the global carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere—as has now been revealed by new analyses of ancient DNA published by a team from the ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 29, 2025
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Research by the University of Southampton and University of East Anglia (UEA) shows a major shift in South Pacific climate conditions—beginning around 1,000 years ago—that may have pushed people to settle further east ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 27, 2025
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What leads to lower atmospheric CO2 during ice ages is a question that has puzzled scientists for decades, and it is one that UConn Department of Marine Sciences Ph.D. student Monica Garity and co-authors are working to understand. ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 26, 2025
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Some 390 million years ago in the ancient ocean, marine animals began colonizing depths previously uninhabited. New research indicates this underwater migration occurred in response to a permanent increase in deep-ocean oxygen, ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 25, 2025
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A new study published by researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa sheds light on the critical role of iron in Earth's climate history, revealing how its sources in the South Pacific Ocean have shifted over ...
Environment
Aug 23, 2025
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Using geochemical analyses of marine sediments, researchers have been able to quantitatively reconstruct the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation over the past 12,000 years. The international research team, led by ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 14, 2025
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The murky world at the bottom of the oceans is now a little clearer, thanks to a new study that tracks the evolution of marine sediment layers across hundreds of millions of years.
Earth Sciences
Aug 11, 2025
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A recent study in Nature Geoscience offers important new insights into the hidden role of ancient groundwater beneath the ocean floor—and how it may have interacted with ice sheets and rising sea levels during past climate ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 6, 2025
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White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) almost went bottom-up during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower than they are today and sharks had to get by with less space. The most recent cold snap ended about 10,000 ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 5, 2025
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