Carbon isotope and Rhenium/Osmium analysis from ODP Leg 174AX, Bass River site, New Jersey Shelf, North Atlantic

The Cenomanian–Turonian oceanic anoxic event (OAE 2) took place 94 million years ago and featured the development of widespread marine anoxia throughout a large part of the global ocean. In addition to the anoxic conditions other environmental disturbances also occurred, including extremely high global temperatures (with a superimposed cooling pulse dubbed the Plenus Cold Event), an intensified hydrological cycle, enhanced silicate weathering, and wildfires. OAE 2 and the climate/environmental perturbations associated with this event are thought to have been ultimately triggered by large-scale submarine volcanism during the emplacement of one or more large igneous provinces into/onto the oceanic crust. This link with volcanism is chiefly evidenced by geochronology studies of the volcanic rocks and stratigraphic archives of the event, and sedimentary proxies of volcanism utilized on these same records of OAE 2, with osmium-isotopes apparently the most reliable of these volcanic markers (at least for OAE 2). This dataset presents a new osmium-isotope dataset for a record of OAE 2 that was deposited on the New Jersey Shelf at the northeastern margin of the proto-North Atlantic, highlighting a signal of volcanic activity that is comparable with other sites. The data are in review for publication at the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, where they are stratigraphically correlated with previously published evidence for temperature changes during OAE 2, highlighting the complex temporal and causal relationships between volcanism and climate during that event.