Broken windows in the greenhouse: Testing Late Cretaceous glacioeustasy

Large, rapid global sea-level changes challenge the paradigm of stable Late Cretaceous greenhouse climates, even during peak intervals of global warmth. Sequence stratigraphic studies on the New Jersey margin yielded evidence of large and rapid sea-level lowerings in the Santonian to early Campanian. The duration and rate of such fluctuations can only be explained by glacioeustatic change. Interpretation of deep-sea benthic foraminiferal oxygen isotopic records and interregional correlations of sequence stratigraphic records provides evidence for the glacioeustatic origin of Santonian to early Campanian sequences.