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Chronologie des variations climatiques rapides pendant la dernière période glaciaire

Édouard BARD, Frauke ROSTEK & Guillemette MÉNOT-COMBES

fr Comptes Rendus Palevol 5 (1-2) - Pages 13-19

Published on 28 February 2006

This article is a part of the thematic issue Climates - Culture - Society in prehistoric times. From the appearance of hominids to the Neolithic.

Chronology of fast climatic changes during the last glacial period

The history of the glacial climate is punctuated by events occurring at the scale of a human life. They are characterised by temperature changes of large amplitude, simultaneously in Greenland and the North Atlantic. These events affected not only the surface hydrology, but also the deep circulation of this oceanic basin. A by-product of the obvious correspondence between Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich in the polar ice and marine sediments is to allow, by correlation, the construction of a calendar chronology for the marine records. This chronostratigraphic approach was validated by means of radiocarbon dating of deep-sea sediments raised on the Iberian Margin. Our study also contributes to the international effort of calibration of the radiocarbon time scale by providing significant results in the interval between 33000 and 41000 years calendar BP.


Keywords:

Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events, radiocarbon chronology, calibration curve

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