Marine isotope stages
Ancient warm and cool periods
Marine isotope stages
Marine isotope stages (MIS), marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages (OIS), are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's paleoclimate, deduced from oxygen isotope data derived from deep sea core samples. Working backwards from the present, which is MIS 1 in the scale, stages with even numbers have high levels of oxygen-18 and represent cold glacial periods, while the odd-numbered stages are lows in the oxygen-18 figures, representing warm interglacial intervals. The data are derived from pollen and foraminifera (plankton) remains in drilled marine sediment cores, sapropels, and other data that reflect historic climate; these are called proxies. The MIS timescale was developed from the pioneering work of Cesare Emiliani in the 1950s, modifying an earlier system introduced by oceanographer Gustaf Arrhenius. It is now widely used in archaeology and other fields to express dating in the Quaternary period (the last 2.6 million years), as well as providing the fullest...
Read on Wikipedia · Image Hannes Grobe (talk), CC BY 3.0
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