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Paleoceanography

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences

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Synonyms

History of ocean basins; Paleo-Oceanography; Paleooceanography; Paleoceanology

Definition

Paleoceanography is the science of the history of the world ocean and its subbasins, of their physiography, benthic and planktonic biota, water masses and their properties, circulation patterns of surface, intermediate, and bottom water masses. Quantitative paleoceanography can in essence only be done from pelagic and hemipelagic sediments of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ocean, basically from the age of the oldest undisturbed ocean crust to modern times. It is closely linked to the time of collecting ocean-wide geophysical data (marine seismics, magnetics), of deep-sea drilling and our increasing ability to collect long sediment cores, providing a global coverage and long, undisturbed time series of paleoceanographic data. It is henceforth a young subdiscipline of the marine geosciences.

Paleoceanography from Infancy to Maturity

When Schopf (1980, see also Kennett, 1982) wrote the first...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Köppen-Laboratory, Institute of Earth Sciences, Saint Petersburg State University/RF, V. O., Sredniy prospect 41, 199 178, RF, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Jörn Thiede

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  1. Jörn Thiede
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland

    Jan Harff

  2. Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Martin Meschede

  3. Leibiniz Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Sven Petersen

  4. Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Lit c/o Helmholtz-Center for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

    Jörn Thiede

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Thiede, J. (2015). Paleoceanography. In: Harff, J., Meschede, M., Petersen, S., Thiede, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_83-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_83-1

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