Branched and isoprenoid tetraether (BIT) index, TEX86 and sea surface temperatures of IODP Hole 302-M0004A

TEX86' rather than TEX86 was proposed to reconstruct SST for uppermost Paleocene strata of Core 302-4A-32X, as abundances of the glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) lipid containing three cyclopentanemoieties (GDGT-3) were unusually high. The TEX86' has the same definition as TEX86, except that isomer GDGT-3 was removed from the equation. For samples with normal GDGT distributions, TEX86 and TEX86' based temperatures were shown to be almost identical (Sluijs et al. 2006).