Today’s polar oceans represent unique environments because of their cold hydrospheres and because of ice caps on adjacent land masses. These environments are the result of a long-term climate change since the end of the Mesozoic and short-term recurring climate shifts between late Cenozoic glacials and interglacials, Studies of the marine depositional environments and sediments that record this evolution have provided important but fragmentary data to describe the onset of the cold polar climate since late Neogene time and the response of fauna and flora to the cold temperatures. Virtually nothing is known of the transition period.

Jacobson, R. 1988. Arctic Drilling Workshop, Ottawa, June 23–24, 1988. Oceanography 1(2):49, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1988.15.

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