Climate- and gateway-driven cooling of Late Eocene to earliest Oligocene sea surface temperatures in the North Sea Basin

During the late Eocene, the Earth’s climate experienced several transient temperature fluctuations including the Vonhof cooling event (C16n.1n; ~35.8 Ma) hitherto known mainly from the southern oceans. Here we reconstruct sea-surface temperatures (SST) and provide δ 18 O and δ 13 C foraminiferal records for the late Eocene and earliest Oligocene in the North Sea Basin. Our data reveal two main perturbations: (1), an abrupt brief cooling of ~4.5...