INSIGHT TO THE PRESENT CAN LIE IN THE PAST: LESSON FROM PALEOSOLS

The key to the past is the present. This guiding principle has molded geologic investigations ranging from stratigraphy to paleoclimate studies. Paleoclimate research has become increasing interest due to modern climate change. Climate change can be associated with changes in temperature, vegetation, and precipitation with paleoclimatologists looking for these signals in the geologic record. Carbon isotopes from paleosols have proven to be valuable archives of climate preserving past vegetation (Boutton, 1996) and used to assess past temperatures (Nordt et al., 2007). Developed by Quaternary/modern soil scientists matrix and pedogenic carbonate nodules preserve δ¹³C the concept has been successfully applied to ancient paleosols (Fox et al., 2012). Carbonate nodules often preserved in the ancient have been used to interpret past climates by using δ¹⁸O as a paleotemperature (Cleveland et al., 2008; .Dworkin et al., 2005) and depth to carbonate (Bk) as an indication of paleoprecipitation (Retallack, 2005). Both paleoclimate proxies were developed and tested on modern databases and then used to evaluate Cretaceous and Tertiary aged paleosols, with no evidence of later researchers applying these proxies being applied to Quaternary soils. Here we apply paleoclimate proxies sucssfully used on ancient soils from Owl Creek, central Texas (Meier er al., 2013) to δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, and depth to Bk to a sedimentary record spanning the last 120 ka to evaluate the synthesis of paleotemperature (Cleveland et al., 2008; Dworkin et al., 2005; Hall and Penner, 2013; Nordt et al., 2007) and paleoprecipitation proxies (Retallack, 2005).