Carbon isotope excursions in paleosol carbonate marking five early Eocene hyperthermals in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming

Abstract

Abstract. Transient greenhouse warming events in the Paleocene and Eocene were associated with the addition of isotopically-light carbon to the exogenic atmosphere–ocean carbon pool, leading to substantial environmental and biotic change. The magnitude of an accompanying carbon isotope excursion (CIE) can be used to constrain both the sources and amounts of carbon released during an event, as well as to correlate marine and terrestrial records with high precision. The Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is well documented, but CIE records for the subsequent warming events are still rare especially from the terrestrial realm. Here, we provide new CIE records for two of the smaller hyperthermal events, I1 and I2, in paleosol carbonate, as well as two additional records of ETM2 and H2 in the Bighorn Basin. Stratigraphic comparison of this expanded, high-resolution terrestrial carbon isotope record to the deep-sea benthic foraminifera records from ODP Sites 1262 and 1263, Walvis Ridge, in the southern Atlantic Ocean corroborates that the Bighorn Basin fluvial sediments record global atmospheric change. The stratigraphic thicknesses of the eccentricity-driven hyperthermals in these archives are in line with precession-forcing of the 7 m thick fluvial overbank-avulsion sedimentary cycles. Using the CALMAG bulk oxide mean annual precipitation proxy, we reconstruct similar or slightly wetter than background soil moisture contents during the four younger hyperthermals, in contrast to drying observed during the PETM. Soil carbonate CIEs vary in magnitude proportionally with the marine CIEs for the four smaller early Eocene hyperthermals. This relationship breaks down for the PETM, with the soil carbonate CIE ~ 2–4‰ less than expected if all five linearly relate to marine CIEs. If the PETM CO2 forcing was similar but scaled to the younger hyperthermals, photosynthetic isotope fractionation or soil environmental factors are needed to explain this anomaly. We use sensitivity testing of experimentally determined photosynthetic isotope discrimination relationships to show that factors other than the recently demonstrated pCO2 sensitivity of C3 plants carbon isotope fractionation are required to explain this anomaly.