An Assessment of the Influence of Orbital Forcing on Late Pliocene Global Sea-Level Using a Shallow-Marine Sedimentary Record from the Wanganui Basin, New Zealand.

Abstract:

Classical Milankovitch Theory suggests variance in the orbital cycles of precession (21 kyr) and obliquity (41 kyr) should have a profound influence on insolation and ice volume. However, the globally-integrated ice volume proxy record (benthic δ¹⁸O) during the Late Pliocene (3.0-2.6 Ma) is dominated by obliquity-paced cycles, and lacks a significant precession component. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, but paleoclimate records independent of the benthic δ¹⁸O record are required to test these. The Wanganui Basin, New Zealand, contains a shallow-marine Neogene sedimentary succession that is widely recognised as an important site for examining sea-level/ice volume changes at orbital frequencies. Here, we present a record of paleobathymetric changes at an orbital resolution from the Late Pliocene Mangaweka Mudstone outcrop succession. Modern analogue-calibrated water-depth proxies of grainsize and benthic foraminifera census data were used to evaluate paleobathymetric changes. An integrated magneto-, bio- and tephrostratigraphy was developed that constrains the outcrop succession to between ~3.0 Ma and 2.58 Ma. Nine distinct cycles spanning ~400,000 years are identified in the grainsize and benthic foraminifera assemblages. Within the uncertainty of the age model, the Mangaweka Mudstone grainsize cycles can be matched one-for-one to the δ¹⁸O cycles, as they display a similar pattern of frequency and amplitude. The frequency of these cycles (and the corresponding interval in the δ¹⁸O record) are dominated by the 41 kyr year obliquity cycle, but with a subordinate eccentricity component. Therefore, the fluctuations in the grainsize and benthic foraminifera proxies likely represent an indirect response to global sea-level fluctuations via their effect on continental shelf sediment transport mechanisms. The implications for the orbital theory of the ice ages are that during the Late Pliocene, global ice volume changes responded primarily to obliquity, and the precession influences were either too low amplitude to have influenced the grainsize and benthic foraminifera assemblages in the Mangaweka Mudstone depositional environment, or cancelled-out in global ice volume/sea-level changes because precession forcing is anti-phased between the hemispheres.