Preface for the article collection “Stratigraphy and paleoclimatic/paleoenvironmental evolution across the Early–Middle Pleistocene transition in the Chiba composite section, Japan, and other reference sections in East Asia”
- Keywords:
- Early–Middle Pleistocene transition, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 19, Matuyama–Brunhes reversal, Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), Chiba composite section
The Earth experienced dramatic and progressive changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulation, ice sheet distributions, and biotic evolution from the Early to Middle Pleistocene. This interval is now known as the “Early–Middle Pleistocene transition (EMPT)” (Head and Gibbard 2015; Head 2019). Because East Asia is an important region for land–ocean–atmosphere heat and moisture exchange owing to its location at the boundary between Eurasia and the Pacific Ocean (e.g., Tada and Murray, 2016) (Fig. 1), understanding paleoenvironmental change in this region will provide valuable insights into Earth’s climate system. Continuous deep-ocean records across this climatic transition are not rare, but constructing detailed links between atmospheric circulation, terrestrial environmental change, and evolution of the biota have been hampered by an inevitable scarcity of continuous and expanded sedimentary records from coastal, shallow-marine environments.