Campanian Climatic Change: Isotopic Evidence from Far East, North America, North Atlantic and Western Europe

Abstract:Paleoclimatic settings have been reconstructed for the Campanian using original oxygen‐isotopic analyses of well‐preserved molluskan and foraminifera shells from Russian Far East, Hokkaido, USA, Belgium and some DSDP holes (95,98,102, 390A, and 392A) in North Atlantic. Early Early Campanian climatic optimum has been recognized from data on high bottom shelf water paleotemperatures in middle latitudes of both the western circum‐Pacific (to 24.2°C) and the eastern circum‐Pacific (to 26.4°C) areas and high bottom shallow water paleotemperatures in high latitudes of the Koryak Upland (22.4–25.5°C), which agrees with the data on the Campanian Barykovskaya flora in high latitudes (Golovneva and Herman, 1998) and Jonker flora and its equivalents in middle latitudes. Judging from the data on comparatively high bottom shallow water paleotemperature values in high latitudes, South Alaska (19.4°C) and the Koryak Upland (22.4–25.5°C), we also expect Latest Campanian temperature maximum, which has not been confirmed, however, for low and middle latitudes by neither of isotopic nor paleobotanic data now. Main climatic tendency during the Campanian (with the exception of Latest Campanian) has been learned from isotopic composition of Campanian aragonitic ammonoid shells from the Hokkaido‐South Sakhalin (Krilyon) marine basin. In contrary to Huber's et al. (2002) assumption, we expect warm greenhouse conditions during the most part of the Campanian.