The early Pliocene warm phase was characterized by high sea surface temperatures and a deep thermocline in the eastern equatorial Pacific. A new hypothesis suggests that the progressive closure of the Panamanian seaway contributed substantially to the termination of this zonally symmetric state in the equatorial Pacific. According to this...
We present benthic isotope stratigraphies for Sites 1236, 1237, 1239, and 1241 that span the late Miocene–Pliocene time interval from 6 to 2.4 Ma. Orbitally tuned timescales were generated for Sites 1237 and 1241 by correlating the high-frequency variations in gamma ray attenuation density, percent sand of the carbonate fraction,...