A 650-Myr history of Earth’s axial precession frequency and the evolution of the Earth-Moon system derived from cyclostratigraphy

Abstract

The preservation of Milankovitch cycles in the stratigraphic record provides independent geological information to study our ancient solar system and can be leveraged to constrain existing theoretical models. Here, we identify 34 high-quality cyclostratigraphic records spanning the past 650 million years and use them to infer the evolution of the Earth-Moon system through a Bayesian inversion method. We reconstruct the time evolution of Earth’s axial precession frequency, lunar distance, length of day, and the periods of obliquity and climatic precession cycles. The results indicate an interval of high tidal energy dissipation in the Earth-Moon system at ~300 to 200 million years ago, and are broadly consistent with an independently calculated tidal evolution model. Our results provide an improved determination of the past periods of obliquity and climatic precession for astrochronology applications and yield important constraints on the history of tidal energy dissipation during the Phanerozoic Eon.