Fossil remains in karst and their role in reconstructing Quaternary paleoclimates and paleoenvironments

摘要

Karst cavities are largely recognized as holding the potential to host archives that bear paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental proxies. In the last decades, speleothems have become one of the most used continental archives for paleoclimatic reconstructions, although the interpretation of their isotopic records is not straightforward. The advance of analytical techniques now allows unprecedented high precision for U-Th (and, in recent years, U-Pb) dating of speleothems with correspondingly high resolutions for isotopic and elemental records. With the prospect of deciphering paleoclimates at decadal or even annual time-scales, speleothems are the favorite cave deposit being investigated these days and it seems they will continue to be in the near future.