Frédéric Fluteau

Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris

Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are unusual volcanic events in which massive amounts of melt (~10^6 km^3) erupt in relatively short time periods (< 10^6 yrs). Most LIP magmas have undergone extensive fractional crystallisation and crustal contamination, but the crustal magmatic plumbing systems and the processes triggering eruptions are poorly under...

A little more than 25 million years ago, tailless monkeys (apes) appeared in Africa. They were the first members of a primate clade leading to humankind, the Hominoidea. Unfortunatly, the evolutionary history of the earliest apes remains largely unknown because of the scarcity of fossil remains and their fragmentary nature (mainly isolated teeth)....

Reorganization of the Asian climate from one dominated by global planetary wind systems to a regional monsoon climate is closely related to the surface uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). However, evaluating this climatic reorganization is limited by difficulty in constraining the complex, multistaged uplift of the TP and contradictory evidence reg...

The Ordovician global cooling trend observed by several temperature proxies, which coincides with one of the most significant evolutionary diversifications on Earth, is yet to be fully understood. This study presents new simulations of pCO2 and surface temperatures using a spatially resolved climate-carbon cycle Earth system model fed with refined...

Several scenarios for the dispersal of Miocene hominids from Africa to Eurasia still coexist. The reason why it remains impossible to decide between these scenarios, and why some fundamental questions about the biogeographic history of Miocene hominids are so difficult to address, lies in a fragmented fossil record and uncertain dating. In order to...

The drivers of the evolution of the South Asian Monsoon remain widely debated. An intensification of monsoonal rainfall recorded in terrestrial and marine sediment archives from the earliest Miocene (23–20 million years ago (Ma)) is generally attributed to Himalayan uplift. However, Indian Ocean palaeorecords place the onset of a strong monsoon aro...

In order to understand mammalian evolution and compute a wide range of biodiversity indices, we commonly use the ‘bioregion’, a spatial division adapted to ecological and evolutionary constraints. While commonly conducted by neontologists, the establishment of bioregions in palaeontology is generally a secondary analysis, shaped on subjective time...

During the mid-to-late Pliocene (ca. 4–3 Ma), several hominin species were present in central Sahel, eastern and southern Africa. The potential for the discovery of hominin remains from this interval is limited by the availability of exposed Pliocene deposits and the ability to investigate them. As a result, most discoveries have been made in the A...

Recent studies suggest increasing sensitivity to orbital variations across the Eocene-Oligocene greenhouse to icehouse climate transition. However, climate simulations and paleoenvironmental studies mostly provide snapshots of the past climate, therefore overlooking the role of this short-term variability in driving major environmental changes and...

Mid Miocene Climate Optimum (MMCO) is an interesting period. Indeed since Mid Eocene (40 Ma) the large trends of climate evolution are: a large decrease of pCO2 and a drastic cooling. The MMCO appears as a short period when these trends were reversed, during 2 Ma, followed by a new period of cooling. Using the IPSL CM5A2 coupled model, we simulated...

Throughout geological time, major climate changes have marked the history of the Earth (Fig. 1.1). Although paleoclimate markers provide us with the broad outlines of these changes, their causes could be manifold as feedback mechanisms occur between the different compartments of the climate system.

The face of the Earth has changed dramatically over the last 4.5 billion years. The growth and emergence of the continental crust transformed a largely ocean-covered planet in its early days into a planet with land masses. Under the action of mantle dynamics, the first continental crusts merged with island arcs to constitute the first continents at...

Based on the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5)-generation previous Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) Earth system model, we designed a new version, IPSL-CM5A2, aiming at running multi-millennial simulations typical of deep-time paleoclimate studies. Three priorities were followed during the setup of the model: (1)...

Understanding of the role of ocean circulation on climate during the Late Cretaceous is contingent on the ability to reconstruct its modes and evolution. Geochemical proxies used to infer modes of past circulation provide conflicting interpretations for the reorganization of the ocean circulation through the Late Cretaceous. Here, we present climat...

The Cenozoic inception and development of the Asian monsoons remain unclear and have generated much debate, as several hypotheses regarding circulation patterns at work in Asia during the Eocene have been proposed in the few last decades. These include (a) the existence of modern-like monsoons since the early Eocene; (b) that of a weak South Asian...

The ongoing surge of international research on Asian Climate and Tectonics enables to better assess interactions between forcing mechanisms (global climate, India-Asia collision, Tibetan Plateau growth) and paleoenvironmental changes (monsoons, aridification), land-sea distribution, surface processes, paleobiogeographic evolution and the global car...

Understanding of the role of ocean circulation on climate during the Late Cretaceous is contingent on the ability to reconstruct its modes and evolution. Geochemical proxies used to infer modes of past circulation provide conflicting interpretations for the reorganization of the ocean circulation through the Late Cretaceous. Here, we present climat...

The Cenozoic onset and development of the Asian monsoons remain unclear and have generated much debate, as several hypotheses regarding circulation patterns at work in Asia during the Eocene have been proposed in the last decades. These include a) the existence of modern-like monsoons since the early Eocene; b) that of a weak South Asian Monsoon (S...

Abstract. Based on the CMIP5-generation previous IPSL earth system model, we designed a new version, IPSL-CM5A2, aiming at running multi-millennial simulations typical of deep-time paleoclimates studies. Three priorities were followed during the set-up of the model: (1) improving the overall model computing performance, (2) overcoming a persistent...

A century ago, the pioneering book published in 1924 Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit explained by plate motion the evolution of vegetation revealed in sedimentary records. Nevertheless, they did not invoke climate changes. In the second part of the 20th century, the intricate relationship between tectonics, long‐term carbon cycle, and climate...

The threat posed by powerful Plinian explosive eruptions, which inject large quantities of ash into the atmosphere and produce pyroclastic density currents (PDC) on ground, is mainly controlled by eruptive parameters and by the direction and strength of the wind field during the eruption. In most studies, mean wind profiles are used to investigate...

The tempo of Large Igneous Province emplacement is crucial to determining the environmental consequences of magmatism on the Earth. Based on detailed flow-by-flow paleomagnetic data from the most representative Permian-Triassic Siberian Traps lava stratigraphy of the northern Siberian platform, we present new constraints on the rate and duration of...

Physical volcanological features are presented for a 710-m-thick section, of the Naude’s Nek Pass, within the lower part of the Lesotho remnant of the Karoo Large Igneous Province. The section consists of inflated pāhoehoe lava with thin, impersistent sedimentary interbeds towards the base. There are seven discreet packages of compound and hummocky...

Stable oxygen isotope compositions of phosphate (δ¹⁸Op) and carbonate (δ¹⁸Oc) of Permo-Triassic tetrapod teeth and bones reported along with their stratigraphic position, estimated age, palaeolatitudes and their carbonate content. Asterisks represent diagenetically altered values. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.28589

The only true living endothermic vertebrates are birds and mammals, which produce and regulate their internal temperature quite independently from their surroundings. For mammal ancestors, anatomical clues suggest that endothermy originated during the Permian or Triassic. Here we investigate the origin of mammalian thermoregulation by analysing apa...

Oxygen isotopes in marine cherts have been used to infer hot oceans during the Archean with temperatures between 60{\deg}C (333 K) and 80{\deg}C (353 K). Such climates are challenging for the early Earth warmed by the faint young Sun. The interpretation of the data has therefore been controversial. 1D climate modeling inferred that such hot climate...

This paper reports new paleomagnetic and geochronologic data from a similar to 1500m thick composite section belonging to the Drakensberg group, the thickest remnant of the Karoo lavas in Northern Lesotho. Flow-by-flow analysis of paleomagnetic directions reveals 21 magnetic directional groups, corresponding to single eruptive events, and 16 indivi...

The period spanning from 825 to 540 Ma is characterized by major changes in the surficial Earth system. This extraordinary interval starts with the breakup of the Rodinia supercontinent and eruption of a series of large igneous provinces and ends with the assembly of Gondwana, giving rise to the Pan-African orogenies. This paleogeographic reorganiz...

Several studies of the marine sedimentary record have documented the evolution of global climate during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. By contrast, the continental records have been less exploited due to the scarcity of continuous sections from the latest Permian into the Early Triassic. The South African Karoo Basin exposes one of the most co...

Tectonics-climate interaction as well as the impact of greenhouse forcing on climate has become a major focus of paleoclimate studies since the quarter of the century. The Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas were uplifted during the collision between the Indian subcontinent and Asia leading to formation of the highest mountain building on the planet....

The 2.76 Ga old Mount Roe Basalt paleosols (MR#1 and MR#2), recognized within the Fortescue Group, Western Australia, represent some of the oldest certified examples of Archean paleoweathering profiles. The loss of Fe in these reference paleosols has been considered as strong evidence for low oxygen in the Late Archean atmosphere. However, the robu...

Covering a key connection between geological processes and life on Earth, this multidisciplinary volume describes the effects of volcanism on the environment by combining present-day observations of volcanism and environmental changes with information from past eruptions preserved in the geologic record. The book discusses the origins, features and...

Covering a key connection between geological processes and life on Earth, this multidisciplinary volume describes the effects of volcanism on the environment by combining present-day observations of volcanism and environmental changes with information from past eruptions preserved in the geologic record. The book discusses the origins, features and...

The question of mass extinctions came to the forefront with the discovery of anomalous iridium concentrations in a thin clay layer at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) near Gubbio (Italy) and the proposal by Alvarez et al. (1980) that an impact of an asteroid was the likely cause of anomalies observed at that boundary. This came less than two...

There is little reason to believe that eruption of the Siberian Traps occurred gradually. On the contrary, trap emplacement likely occurred in the form of brief but voluminous volcanic pulses, as for example demonstrated for theDeccan Traps (Chenet et al., 2008, 2009) in India and for the Karoo Traps (Moulin et al., 2011, 2012) in South Africa. To...

There are at least a dozen Phanerozoic continental flood basalts and oceanic plateaus (large igneous provinces) that roughly obey a "rule of two times one million" (volume of extruded lava of one million cubic kilometers and duration of volcanic activity ∼1 m.y.). The correlation between large igneous province ages and mass extinctions (and oceanic...

Climatic and environmental changes are now widely recognized as the main cause of mass extinctions. Global warming that immediately preceded the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is regarded as a consequence of CO2released during the main phase of Deccan Trap emplacement. Modeling has shown that such global warming cannot be explained by the continuous...

It is generally assumed that the Earth's surface was warm during most of its early history but that significant cooling occurred between 2.45 and 2.22 Ga leading to the first global and cyclical glacial epoch. This onset of snowball Earth conditions was coeval with a large pulse of oxygenation that permanently oxygenated the atmosphere and shallow...

The Syabru-Bensi hydrothermal system (SBHS), located at the Main Central Thrust (MCT) zone in Central Nepal, is characterized by hot (30–62 °C) water springs and cold (<35 °C) carbon dioxide (CO2) degassing areas. From 2007 to 2011, five gas zones (GZ1-5) were studied, with more than 1600 CO2 and 850 radon flux measurements, with complementary self...

During the Archaean, the Sun's luminosity was 18 to 25% lower than the present day. One-dimensional radiative convective models (RCM) generally infer that high concentrations of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4) are required to prevent the early Earth's surface temperature from dropping below the freezing point of liquid water and satisfying the faint yo...

This paper uses a method of atmospheric flow analogues to reconstruct an ensemble of atmospheric variables (namely sea-level pressure, surface temperature and wind speed) between 1781 and 1785. The properties of this ensemble are investigated and tested against observations of temperature. The goal of the paper is to assess whether the atmospheric...

Whereas the snowball Earth hypothesis seems to account for most of the major fea-tures of the Neoproterozoic glacial records, the causes that drove the Earth into a snowball state remain largely open to debate. Most of the mechanisms leading to the initiation of a snowball Earth are based on the existence of the unusual preponder-ance of land masse...

Considering the weak luminosity of the early Sun, it is generally inferred that high concentrations of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4) are required to prevent the early Earth's surface temperature to drop below the freezing point of liquid water. Conversely, a new controversial assumption based on banded iron formation mineralogy hypothesizes that the...

The Triassic-Jurassic boundary (TJB) is associated with one of the five largest mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. A deep carbon cycle perturbation and a carbonate production crisis are observed during the late Triassic. The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), one of the most important large igneous provinces of the Phanerozoic, emplaced a...

The Cenozoic is a period of drastic environmental changes expressed by a transition from greenhouse to icehouse climate close to the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (33.8Ma) and marked by the formation of the Antarctica ice sheet with a major ice accumulation starting in the earliest Oligocene. Superimposed to this global cooling trend, the middle Miocen...

We have collected two new detailed records of what could be the second oldest well documented reversal, the "van Zijl" Jurassic (˜180 Ma) reversal recorded in the thick basalt sequences of the Karoo large igneous province in Lesotho and South Africa. Sections yielded 10 and 8 independent transitional paleomagnetic directions respectively over two c...

Two new volcanic key sections of the Siberian traps erupted ~ 250 million years ago have been studied in the Norilsk region (NW of the Siberian platform). Along with results obtained earlier from both this area (Heunemann et al., 2004) and Maymecha-Kotuy region (northern Siberian platform, Pavlov et al., 2011) these data constitute rather extensive...

The Karoo traps in southern Africa have been linked to the (relatively small) Pliensbachian-Toarcian extinctions. In an attempt to understand why the extinction was far less severe than the one at the KT boundary (related to the Deccan traps and Chicxulub impact), we have undertaken a large sampling program for mainly paleomagnetism and geochronolo...

1] We have carried out paleomagnetic sampling of a ∼750 m sequence of the Karoo large igneous province (Naude's Nek Pass, South Africa). K‐Ar dating (Cassignol‐Gillot) has been performed on four samples from the 650 m upper unit (mean age 179.2 ± 1.8 Ma) and a sample from the lower unit (184.8 ± 2.6 Ma). A succession of two phases of volcanism is s...

Detailed paleomagnetic studies have shown that the effusive Permian-Triassic traps in the Kotui River valley were formed as the result of volcanic activity, which occurred in the form of volcanic pulses and individual eruptions with net duration of at most 7000–8000 years, excluding the periods of volcanic quiescence. According to the analysis of t...

Early Cretaceous vertebrate assemblages from East Asia and particularly the Jehol Biota of northeastern China flourished during a period of highly debated climatic history. While the unique characters of these continental faunas have been the subject of various speculations about their biogeographic history, little attention has been paid to their...

The length-of-day (i.e. the time of one rotation of the Earth) is deeply affected by the interaction of the Earth with the atmosphere, and consequently by the state of the atmosphere and by the climate. At very long timescale, the climate has changed deeply, due to the change of the paleogeography, to the formation/melting of icecaps, to the change...