Giant Oyster Shell Discovery Suggests Early Holocene Seas Were 4°C (Up To 8°C) Warmer Than Today

Scientists continue to uncover evidence of a much warmer Early Holocene, when CO2 hovered near 260 ppm.

According to a new study, an ancient 42-centimeter long oyster shell has been found ~20 km inland from today’s Taipei Basin (Taiwan) coast.

Extensive isotope analyses (69 of them) of a 5 cm section of the shell reveal that the last time this area was regularly under sea level was about 8000 years ago, or during the Early Holocene.

Given that oysters reside in water depths of about 2 meters, sea levels can be calculated to have been about 1-3 meters higher than present at that time.

Also, while modern winter temperatures range from 14-16°C at this location, the analyses further revealed that the Early Holocene winter sea surface temperatures likely ranged from 15 to 23°C, which is ~4°C warmer than today on average, and up to 8°C warmer if winter temperatures reached 23°C.

“winter temperature in Taipei Basin ~7660 cal BP was estimated as 15-23°C, warmer than today [14-16°C]”

Image Source: Li et al., 2024

6 responses to “Giant Oyster Shell Discovery Suggests Early Holocene Seas Were 4°C (Up To 8°C) Warmer Than Today”

  1. Hansi
  2. Richard Evans

    The idea that CO2 levels were 260ppmv is only indicated by paleo-climate ice-core which have been shown to consistently underestimate paleo CO2 levels. Just throwing that out there. Jaworowski has some good papers on the flaws with ice-core.

  3. Nameless

    Can anyone explain: where those 1-3 meters of sea water is gone?

  4. mike rafone

    “an giant”

    who even talks like that?

  5. Hansi

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