Abstract
The Shimosa Group, middle- to late-Pleistocene sedimentary succession, has been the focus of stratigraphic attention because it is beneath the Tokyo metropolitan area of central Japan. It is also of palaeoclimatic significance because it contains important interglacial marine strata of the past 450,000 years. Since the marine strata of the Shimosa Group were formed in the fluvial, estuary, and shallow inner bay known as Palaeo-Tokyo Bay, few occurrences of marine microfossils, make it difficult to quantitatively reconstruct the palaeotemperatures. Here, we extracted long-chain alkenones from the core GS-UR-1 penetrating the Shimosa Group to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11. We found that the alkenone unsaturation ratio appears to reflect the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of Palaeo-Tokyo Bays formed during MIS 5e, 7e, 9, and 11, which might be recorded around the peak of each interglacial period. The palaeo-SSTs during each interglacial period were 2–3 ℃ higher than the palaeo-SSTs of Tokyo Bay in the pre-industrial era, seemed to reach the similar level as the Holocene thermal maximum. We suggest that the LCA-based proxy, which has not been utilized hitherto in studies on the Shimosa Group, demonstrates its potential to provide palaeoclimatic and stratigraphic information.