Marine Paleoclimatology — Motivation, Tools, and Results

During the past five decades, sediment records from a vast number of cores and sites have been investigated in order to study developments, extent and reasons for paleo-climatic variations. Pioneering work has been done not only for marine geology. Methods for the extraction of more or less quantitative paleo-climate signals as well as for the dating of records were developed or refined. Evidence for long-term climatic change comes from marine cores, whose time coverage reaches far beyond that of terrestrial archives. Within the space of this paper not even an attempt can be made to give a comprehensive review on marine paleoclimatology. Instead it will give an insight into the marine paleo-climatologist’s toolbox. Only selected, most widely used methods can be presented in context with related exemplatory findings. The reader is advised to [1144] for a more extensive review.