Late pleistocene paleotemperatures at tongue of the ocean, bahamas.

Estimates of paleotemperatures, based upon paleoecological analysis of planktonic foraminiferal thanatocoenoses of three piston cores from Tongue of the Ocean, Bahamas, indicate a maximum mean variation between Late Pleistocene glacial and nonglacial stages of 3.6 degrees C. The data also indicate that the Early Wisconsin glacial stage was 0.

Conceptual model of the Bahamian Platform for the last 135 million years.

The subsidence history of the Bahamian Platform points to a non-uniform rate of sea-floor spreading since the beginning of the Cretaceous. Lower Cretaceous rates of perhaps 5 cm/yr led to an active trench system at the boundary between the American and Caribbean lithosphere plates, and the rapid subsidence of the continental margin produced graben faults on the Bahamian Platform and normal faults in Cuba.