NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Phanerozoic record of global sea-level change for last 100 Ma

We review Phanerozoic sea-level changes (543 Ma to present) on various time scales and present a new sea-level record for the last 100 my. Long-term sea level peaked at 100±50 m during the Cretaceous, implying that ocean crust production rates were much lower than previously inferred. Sea level mirrors d18O variations, reflecting ice-volume change on the 10^4-10^6-year scales, but a link between d18O and sea level on the 10^7-year scale must be due to temperature changes that we attribute to tectonically controlled CO2 variations. Sea-level change has influenced phytoplankton evolution, ocean chemistry, and the loci of carbonate, organic carbon, and siliciclastic sediment burial. Over the past 100 my, sea-level changes reflect global climate evolution from a time of ephemeral Antarctic ice sheets (100-33 Ma), through a time of large ice sheets primarily in Antarctica (33-2.5 Ma), to a world with large Antarctic and large, variable Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (2.5-0 Ma).