Carbonate clumped isotope constraints on Silurian ocean temperature and seawater δ18O

Abstract

Much of what we know about the history of Earth’s climate derives from the chemistry of carbonate minerals in the sedimentary record. The oxygen isotopic compositions (δ18O) of calcitic marine fossils and cements have been widely used as a proxy for past seawater temperatures, but application of this proxy to deep geologic time is complicated by diagenetic alteration and uncertainties in the δ18O of seawater in the past. Carbonate clumped isotope thermometry provides an independent estimate of the temperature of the water from which a calcite phase precipitated, and allows direct calculation of the δ18O of the water. The clumped isotope composition of calcites is also highly sensitive to recrystallization and can help diagnose different modes of diagenetic alteration, enabling evaluation of preservation states and identification of the most pristine materials from within a sample set—critical information for assessing the quality of paleoproxy data generated from carbonates.We measured the clumped isotope composition of a large suite of calcitic fossils (primarily brachiopods and corals), sedimentary grains, and cements from Silurian (ca. 433Ma) stratigraphic sections on the island of Gotland, Sweden. Substantial variability in clumped isotope temperatures suggests differential preservation with alteration largely tied to rock-buffered diagenesis, complicating the generation of a stratigraphically resolved climate history through these sections. Despite the generally high preservation quality of samples from these sections, micro-scale observations of calcite fabric and trace metal composition using electron backscatter diffraction and electron microprobe analysis suggest that only a subset of relatively pristine samples retain primary clumped isotope signatures. These samples indicate that Silurian tropical oceans were likely warm (33±7°C) and similar in oxygen isotopic composition to that estimated for a “modern” ice-free world (δ18OVSMOW of −1.1±1.3‰). This result joins the growing body of evidence that suggests the δ18O of Earth’s ocean waters has remained broadly constant through time.