Oxygen-isotope palaeothermometry (Urey and Emiliani)
Paleotermometría con isótopos de oxígeno (Urey y Emiliani)
- Date
- 1947-1955 · confidence high
- Place
- Miami, Florida, United States
- Credited to
- Harold Urey and Cesare Emiliani
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
In 1947 Harold Urey calculated that the oxygen-18 proportion in carbonates depends on the temperature of the water in which they form, and in 1955 Cesare Emiliani applied the method to foraminifera in ocean sediments. He thus identified a succession of glacial and interglacial cycles.
It was later seen that the signal also reflects continental ice volume (Shackleton, 1967), not temperature alone. Urey worked in Chicago; the application to sediments was carried out in Chicago and Miami.
What it led to
- marine isotope stages and Quaternary chronology
- verification of the Milankovitch theory
- reconstruction of past temperatures