Marine isotope stages

The MIS timescale was developed from the pioneering work of Cesare Emiliani in the 1950s, and is now widely used in archaeology and other fields to express dating in the Quaternary period (the last 2.6 million years), as well as providing the fullest and best data for that period for paleoclimatology or the study of the early climate of the Earth,[1] representing "the standard to which we correlate other Quaternary climate records".

[4] In 1957 Emiliani moved to the University of Miami to have access to core-drilling ships and equipment, and began to drill in the Caribbean and collect core data.

A graph of the entire series of stages then revealed unsuspected advances and retreats of ice and also filled in the details of the stadials and interstadials.

The marine isotopic records appear more complete and detailed than any terrestrial equivalents, and have enabled a timeline of glaciation for the Plio-Pleistocene to be identified.

The SPECMAP Project, funded by the US National Science Foundation, has produced one standard chronology for oxygen isotope records, although there are others.

This high resolution chronology was derived from several isotopic records, the composite curve was then smoothed, filtered and tuned to the known cycles of the astronomical variables.

The theoretical advances and greatly improved data available by the 1970s enabled a "grand synthesis" to be made, best known from the 1976 paper Variations in the earth’s orbit: pacemaker of the ice ages (in Science), by J.D.

Hays, Shackleton and John Imbrie, which is still widely accepted, and covers the MIS timescale and the causal effect of the orbital theory.