A review of last interglacial sea-level proxies in the western Atlantic and southwestern Caribbean, from Brazil to Honduras

[摘要] We use a standardized template for Pleistocene sea-leveldata to review last interglacial (Marine Isotope Stage 5 – MIS 5) sea-level indicators along thecoasts of the western Atlantic and southwestern Caribbean, on a transectspanning from Brazil to Honduras and including the islands of Aruba,Bonaire, and Curaçao. We identified six main types of sea-levelindicators (beach deposits, coral reef terraces, lagoonal deposits, marineterraces, Ophiomorpha burrows, and tidal notches) and produced 55 standardized datapoints, each constrained by one or more geochronological methods. Sea-levelindicators are well preserved along the Brazilian coasts, providing analmost continuous north-to-south transect. However, this continuitydisappears north of the Rio Grande do Norte Brazilian state. According tothe sea-level index points (discrete past position of relative sea level inspace and time) the paleo sea-level values range from ∼  5.6 to 20 m above sea level (a.s.l.) in the continental sector and from ∼  2 to 10 m a.s.l. in the Caribbean islands. In this paper, we address the uncertaintiessurrounding these values. From our review, we identify that the coasts ofnorthern Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela wouldbenefit from a renewed study of Pleistocene sea-level indicators, as it wasnot possible to identify sea-level index points for the last interglacialcoastal outcrops of these countries. Future research must also be directedat improving the chronological control at several locations, and severalsites would benefit from the re-measurement of sea-level index points usingmore accurate elevation measurement techniques. The database compiled inthis study is available in spreadsheet format at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5516444 (Version 1.02; Rubio-Sandoval et al.,2021).

[学科分类] 眼科学