Terrestrial climate of the Cretaceous “hot-house” from the Songliao Basin, northeast China

Because of the need to understand the links and feedbacks of the carbon cycle during times of global greenhouse we are examining the Cretaceous climate record preserved in lake sediments in northern China.  Along with our long-term collaborator, Professor Stephan Graham (Dept. Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford) we are using the stable isotopes of ostracod valves from drill cores in the Songliao basin to reconstruct climate records. The Songliao basin offers a unique opportunity to understand Cretaceous climate of terrestrial settings because it contains a nearly complete record of lacustrine sediments deposited throughout the Cretaceous and there is an active drilling project to recover core from this paleolake. Our recent papers on the Songliao basin were published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeocology (Chamberlain et al., 2013), Geology (Gao et al., 2015; 2016), American Journal of Science (Ibarra and Chamberlain, 2015), Clays and Clay Minerals (Gao et al., 2015), Earth & Planetary Science Letters (Jones et al., 2018), and Earth Sciences Reviews (Gao et al., 2021).